Politics & Government

Ferndale City Council to Consider Chicken Ordinance Tonight

Proposal would allow most residents in Ferndale to keep chickens, with a permit and inspection.

Ferndale City Council tonight will consider a proposed ordinance change that would allow most residents in the city to keep chickens.

Under the current city ordinance, residents can’t have a chicken coop within 150 feet of any structure – essentially making it impossible for any resident to have chickens because of the average lot size. The proposed change reduces the distance to 10 feet from any structure and coops must be in the backyard.

“This was driven by some requests from citizens but then we took that and ,” Ferndale City Manager April McGrath said. “Now it’s in front of council.”

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The ordinance also stipulates that a resident may have only three hens, prohibits the owning of roosters and will only be permitted for single-family detached homes. The chicken permits will be valid for a year and can be renewed.

Permit would require inspection within 30 days

Community and Economic Development Director Derek Delacourt said the  and city staff has been ironing out details of the permit and inspection process since then.

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“We took some time to make those modifications,” he said.

The process would be that a resident requests the permit and submits the appropriate forms and required documentation. Once the permit is issued, the resident has 30 days to contact the city to schedule an inspection.

“If they don’t it is automatically revoked,” Delacourt said.

The inspections will be done by code enforcement officers who are already on city staff, he said.

Resident hopes for approval

Ferndale resident Laura Mikulski said she was the first resident to request the ordinance change about three or four years ago, and the issue only picked up interest in the past couple of years.

“I’m obviously very hopeful that it’ll pass in its current writing,” she said. “I’m really happy to see that it’s now back on the agenda. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”


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