If you live in Palm Coast, a chicken coop may be coming to a backyard near you.
The city today launched a pilot program that will permit 50 residents to have up to four chickens per backyard coop. The $50 permit, valid for two years, will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis.
The program is available to residents of homesteaded, single-family houses only. That means residents of areas controlled by homeowner associations are not eligible. Nor are residents in apartments or duplexes. Nor are renters. Nor are roosters.
The initiative, championed by Council member Theresa Pontieri, seeks to more realistically acknowledge that undocumented chickens are out there anyway, they do a lot of good, they’re not nearly the harmful, noisy nuisance prejudice makes them out to be, and they might as well be regulated, enabling more people to raise and enjoy chickens and their products.
“I don’t know about you all, but I know a lot of people that have chickens now,” Pontieri told her council colleagues in May. “I didn’t even know somebody on my street had chickens until the other day, and I’ve lived there for over two years. So I don’t think that the outrage that some–and I haven’t heard any outrage, let me be very clear, but in the past, there’s been some about the presence of chickens–is really, I think a little overstated from some.”
Those interested in participating in the pilot program will have to provide the city with a “site plan” drawing of the proposed chicken coop showing landscape screening that ensures the chickens are safe from predators. The coop may not be larger than 100 square feet or higher than 6 feet. Coops are not cheap. In 2023, council members were shown coops costing from the hundreds of dollars to $1,000.
Placement guidelines are rigorous: The coop must be at least 7.5 feet from any property line in the backyard. 20 feet for the bin collecting manure. On corner lots, the coop must be behind the street-side facade of the house, so it’s not visible from the street, and in no circumstance is the coop allowed to be on any easement.
Residents will also be required to complete a class on the care and raising of chickens through the University of Florida Agriculture Extension Service or other similar providers.
No slaughtering of chicken is allowed, and while eggs may be shared with neighbors, friends and family, they may not be sold.
When the pilot program ends, and assuming the council does not renew it or extend it, good-standing residents with existing permits will be allowed to keep their animals, but not add to them, until the animals die. A hen lives six to eight years.
“I do feel that if we were to engage in some reasonable regulations, we could very easily allow people to have backyard chickens without encroaching on their neighbors’ enjoyment of their own properties,” Pontieri said.
Council member Dave Sullivan was certain that it would not result in a “chicken on every lot” scenario, thus ensuring–as somebody had to–that the obligatory reference to the most famous phrase of Herbert Hoover’s 1928 presidential campaign got its due. (The phrase is always misattributed. It originated in a flyer issued by a political action committee called the Republican Business Men Inc. See details here.)
Chickens are allowed with far fewer restrictions in agricultural zoning districts, of which there are a few in the city.
The backyard-chicken movement got stronger a few years ago, especially after the Covid pandemic. The city came close to adopting a pilot program in 2023, when just 25 permits would have been issued, only for the city council at the time to balk at the last minute. The four council members who opposed the plan in one form or another are all gone.
The only holdover, Pontieri, was also the only one to strongly back the idea. She asked for it to be brought back to the council. “We’re regulating, we’re engaging in policy making, but we’re not engaging in government overreach,” she said. “I don’t understand why we wouldn’t also allow backyard chickens.”
Barbara Grossman, the city’s code enforcement manager, summarized the benefits of backyard chickens when she last presented the idea in mid-May: “Self-sufficiency, quality eggs, reduction of lawn pests, free from chemicals and pesticides, better tasting and healthier eggs, cost efficiencies and a more active lifestyle.” The surge in avian flu in commercial farms and the subsequent increase in the price of eggs have also added momentum to the initiative.
Council member Charles Gambaro said he raised chickens when he was younger–”we had a lot more than just four chickens”–and in this case was only concerned about having “some basic ground rules” in place. He encouraged self-policing.
So this time around, the council was more unanimously behind the idea. When Grossman presented the idea in May, it was to be for 20 permits. They happily increased the number of permits to 50. Pontieri wanted to limit the pilot program to a year, but the two-year pilot stuck.
“I had chickens. I love chickens. I had three. They’re no problem,” Sheila Hines, a 30-year resident in Palm Coast told the council, essentially owning up to raising undocumented ones. “Every morning I’d go out and get these beautiful eggs. It was a wonderful thing. And then the coyote found them. 6:30 I went to feed them. 8:30 they were gone. They were in a pot somewhere. But I’m going to get more chickens. And I bet you’d be surprised. There are probably hundreds of people in Palm Coast that have chickens, is my guess.” Her only issue was the $50 fee.
A B-Section resident told the council that “our family’s chickens are not farm animals, but beloved pets that play an essential and irreplaceable role in our children’s emotional and physical health.” The family’s chickens have been “therapy with feathers” to her son, who has faced “emotional challenges from bullying in school.”
The application:
Application_for_Chickens_ADA_7f23a1053f
