There will be no pet chickens in Jefferson after the city council failed to accept the recommendation of the planning and zoning commission to amend the zoning code to allow the board of adjustment to allow exceptions to the ban on livestock.
At the council’s Aug. 12 meeting, council member Lisa Jaskey made a motion to amend Section 165.83 of the zoning code as recommended. Council members Shannon Black and Gary Von Ahsen were absent. Neither Larry Teeples nor Harry Ahrenholtz seconded Jaskey’s motion and it died.
Teeples and Ahrenholtz both said they hadn’t heard comments from residents with an interest in keeping livestock in the city.
The question was brought to the planning and zoning commission by Joyce Allender, who recently moved into Jefferson from a rural location where her daughter Conner kept three banty hens as pets. After her presentation to the commission, the commission recommended that the board of adjustment be empowered to make exceptions to the livestock ban on a case by case basis.
Allender was at the Tuesday council meeting. No members of the planning and zoning commission were present.
“I’m just asking to have my family move to town, intact. Three little chickens,” Allender told the council.
Ahrenholtz, the newest member of the council, asked about the cost of amending an ordinance. Attorney Bob Schwarzkopf said there would be attorney’s fees in drafting the ordinance, as well as the cost of publishing the required legal notices. “I’m having a real difficult time with it, particularly not hearing any more than what I’ve heard, which is basically nothing,” Ahrenholtz said.
City administrator Mike Palmer after the meeting estimated the cost to amend a city ordinance to be about $1,000.
