Maria and I found ourselves going round and round in a circle debating the issue of chickens in Iowa City. Maria is very much in favor of granting neighbors veto-power over urban chickens. She acknowledges that such veto-power is "a dangerous precedent" and fully embraces that precedent. She is upset that some of her neighbors have dogs that bark at night and that the Animal Shelter and the Iowa City Police Department do nothing to enforce existing noise ordinances. She believes that chickens in the neighborhood would create more noxious noise -- something that makes no sense to me.
I am not saying that uncontrolled dogs don't make noise. I hear dogs late at night. I also hear loud pedestrians, traffic ambiance, and sirens most nights, too. But I also acknowledge that I live in a small city. I don't expect silence in my neighborhood -- not even at night. If I wanted that, I would move out into the country where there are many more chickens but much less noises.
Accepting that there is a noise ordinance in Iowa City that may or may not be unevenly enforced, I pointed out that it is a lot easier to report a chicken coop whose construction or placement within a yard violates zoning laws than it is to register randomly occurring noises. It is also pretty concrete to acknowledge if someone is violating the law by allowing the hens to escape their pens or if they have too many hens or if they purchase a rooster (which is a violation of the proposed "urban chicken" ordinance). I received the reply that someone still has to enforce the law and ordinances are supposedly already enforced selectively.
That prompted this final response by me:
I get it. We shouldn't give people the option of owning up to four hens within city limits because someone may obtain an illegal rooster and because someday Iowa City might get struck by a bird flu virus that will force the city to slaughter all existing chickens. And people shouldn't be given the benefit of the doubt that they will build zone-complying structures on their own property.(Did I forget to mention that she is worried that the presence of chickens in Iowa City will compromise our immune systems and subject us to a "deadly bird flu H5N1" and lead to the slaughter of all nearby chickens?)
I don't disagree that there are bad neighbors in Iowa City, nor do I disagree that some people who want to raise chickens might be bad urban chicken farmers -- just like there are bad parents and bad home owners and bad pet owners, etc. But I definitely do disagree with starting from the assumption that everyone will be a zoning-violator or that everyone will be a bad neighbor or a delinquent urban chicken farmer. Iowa City's City Council will approve zoning ordinances to regulate those who build coops and raise chickens and if/when there are problems with individual zoning-violators, there will be remedies for addressing those problem people.
I disagree with giving neighbors the ability to veto whether or not people can build chicken coops that conform to city law or whether or not they can raise hens in their own yard. I agree that it would be nice to notify your neighbor of your plans to raise chickens, but I don't believe that they should be required to do so. Ultimately, it's my home and my property. My neighbors shouldn't gain the ability to veto whether or not I decide to raise chickens, nor should they be granted the "dangerous precedent" to veto if I build a garage or add onto my house or get another dog or get licensed again to become a foster parents or whatever else.
Personally, I don't think that many people will actually choose to raise urban chickens in Iowa City and most people who choose to raise them will eventually discover that their chickens will eventually stop laying eggs without the presence of a rooster. But, based off the precedent of other nearby "urban chicken" communities, I strongly predict that Iowa City will be safe from roaming chickens, stinking coops, and noisy roosters if the City Council goes ahead and approves this new ordinance -- which is what they need to do at the third and final reading of these two zoning ordinance changes.
