{"id":40279,"date":"2016-06-21T21:31:09","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T01:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=40279"},"modified":"2016-06-21T21:31:09","modified_gmt":"2016-06-22T01:31:09","slug":"county-attorney-lehigh-acres-cant-go-it-alone-on-backyard-chickens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2016\/06\/county-attorney-lehigh-acres-cant-go-it-alone-on-backyard-chickens\/","title":{"rendered":"County Attorney: Lehigh Acres Can’t Go it Alone on Backyard Chickens"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Supporters of backyard chickens have submitted a formal proposal to Lee County to allow chickens in Lehigh Acres, but the county attorney says any zoning change has to apply across the county.<\/p>\n

Hopeful\u00a0hen keepers\u00a0in\u00a0Lehigh Acres\u00a0have proposed a county\u00a0ordinance to allow them to keep backyard broods, but Lee County’s attorney said Tuesday morning it would have to be adopted countywide.<\/p>\n

The Lehigh Acres Community Council this week voted to ask the Board of County Commissioners to consider enacting backyard chicken zoning for Lehigh Acres with restrictions.<\/p>\n

But County Attorney Richard Wesch told the five county commissioners Tuesday that changing zoning to allow chickens to be raised on the property\u00a0 must be applied across all sections of\u00a0the unincorporated county that carry the same\u00a0zoning designation.<\/p>\n

The push to allow chickens in Lehigh began a couple of months ago, when resident Chuck Edwards\u00a0was told to\u00a0get rid\u00a0of chickens he was raising on his property in a rural section of Lehigh.\u00a0He took his case to the Board of County Commissioners and later to the Lehigh Acres Community Council where residents packed a couple meetings of the generally quiet council to discuss the chicken issue.<\/p>\n

The time consumed by process of getting the proposed new rules to formal consideration by the commissioners\u00a0frustrates Edwards<\/p>\n

A subcommittee created by the Lehigh Acres Community Council developed a proposed set of\u00a0regulations governing the size of the chicken coop and fenced enclosure for the chickens after heated debate Monday night, the community council backed the plan with a 11 to 4 vote<\/p>\n

Backyard chickens would be limited to raising hens, and no roosters,\u00a0at single family homes only that are either owner-occupied or where a tenant has a sworn statement from the property owner granting them permission to raise chickens. Before a chicken permit could be granted, neighbors would have to be notified of the application and the putative owner of the chickens would be required to take an approved class in chicken raising.\u00a0No breeding or commercial fertilizer production and or killing of chickens would be allowed only raising of eggs.\u00a0The new permit to raise hens would require a $25 backyard chicken fee.<\/p>\n

No\u00a0more than five hens would be allowed for every 10,000 sq. ft of property, \u00bc acre lots. Most lots in the core of Lehigh Acres are less than 10,000 sq. ft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supporters of backyard chickens have submitted a formal proposal to Lee County to allow chickens in Lehigh Acres, but the county attorney says any zoning change has to apply across… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":40280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}