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She Got a Permit for Her Chickens. Now the City Is Fining Her $80k
- crooked-v 1y agoThis is like a microcosm of all the NIMBY crap that's slowed housing construction to a crawl in every major US city. Neighbors get to object to things already explicitly allowed by law, a total lack of objective standards, ex post facto changes of standards...
- goldfishgold 1y agoI have no problem with backyard chickens but I do dislike this issue being used by libertarians as a wedge. Property rights shouldn’t be sacrosanct over and above reasonable restrictions by the broader community.
- TulliusCicero 1y agoI don't see the issue you see here. It seems like the city fucked things up and is now penalizing the woman to cover up their own incompetence. One would think that any sensible person would object to this, not just libertarians.
- tptacek 1y agoNot really? Under the city's rules, she's not allowed to have backyard chickens. She's refusing to get rid of them, and recurring fines are how cities respond to that. (I'm aware there's a claim the city mismanaged its rules).
- TulliusCicero 1y agoYes really? She got explicit permission from the city to raise the chickens, and then they tried to pull the rug out from under her later, after she'd already spent thousands on a chicken coop. > The city claimed that it had forgotten to notify the neighbors of their right to object during the review process and had therefore done so retroactively. Like lmao, that's not how due process works man. You can't tell someone they can build something, then go "oh whoops we fucked up, you can't build it after all" after they're already done and then punish them for it. Imagine if NYC tried to pull this for a high-rise after it was already constructed. "Oh you already built it? Sorry man, turns out you're not allowed to put a building that tall there, you'll have to take it down. Oopsies!"
- nemomarx 1y agoYeah, I can see the neighbors having an issue with the city (failed to notify them) but the remedy should reasonably be between those neighbors and the city for losing an opportunity to object. Retroactively removing permission doesn't make sense.
- Spooky23 1y agoThat’s not quite accurate. There was a procedural failure where the city issued a permit while failing to follow its process. It an internal control failure, and the permitee by all accounts acted in good faith.
- School-Cotton 1y agoThe city fucked up by accidentally telling her she was allowed to have chickens when in fact she’s not.
- TulliusCicero 1y agoRight, and if the neighbors have a problem with the city fucking up, that makes sense. The city should be punished for their fuckup. The person who shouldn't be punished is the woman who only built a chicken coop after the city explicitly granted her permission.
- School-Cotton 1y agoShe doesn’t have permission and never did. They accidentally told her she did. Now that she knows about the mistake she needs to get rid of her chickens. I’d support her being able to force the city to reimburse her for her costs but it’s ludicrous to say someone should be allowed to permanently do something illegal because at one point they were told it was legal due to a bureaucratic mistake.
- trollbridge 1y agoThe entire point of a permit is that you can do something and invest without worrying about the city later saying “oh sorry, you can’t do that”.
- TulliusCicero 1y ago> She doesn’t have permission and never did. Yes she did. The city explicitly granted her permission. If they fucked up their own process, that's on them, not her. > I’d support her being able to force the city to reimburse her for her costs but it’s ludicrous to say someone should be allowed to permanently do something illegal because at one point they were told it was legal due to a bureaucratic mistake. So if someone constructed a high rise in Manhattan and after it was already finished, and NYC tried to say, "oh sorry turns out we gave you that building permit erroneously, we screwed up how we handled the permitting process, you'll have to take it down now", you'd think that was reasonable? 99% of people would think that was absolutely crazy if they tried to do that, unless there was an actual safety issue involved.
- tptacek 1y agoThat's true, but "neighbors have a veto over whether you can do X" is an untenable way to manage those property rights. A bigger city would codify limits on what you can do with waterfowl or whatever. Douglas doesn't even have a city attorney.
- TulliusCicero 1y agoExactly. It's nonsense to have a law that says, "you can do X on your property unless someone, anyone objects". Imagine if other laws all worked that way. Oh, you can drive whatever speed you want, unless someone else on the road with you has a problem with it!
- Bjartr 1y agoYou can, however, drive any speed you want on your own property.
- readams 1y agoAnd yet, if you tried it, you might find this often not as true as you might think.
- Spooky23 1y agoNot if your excessive speed is exacerbating my migraines and disrupting the sleep patterns of my cats. Also, the dust thrown up by your excessive speed by vehicle is increasing particulate matter in the air, which may contain known carcinogenic compounds.
- makeitdouble 1y agoThe charitable take would be that chickens are otherwise forbidden, but having all your neighbors approval grants an exception. Reading the article I wouldn't assume her city to be in that position, but the system itself can have merits depending on how it's deployed.
- pfdietz 1y agoSo, you can't accept when libertarians are right?
- TulliusCicero 1y agoI can understand having restrictions against chickens in an area, but "you can do this unless a single neighbor objects" is a crazy way of handling it imo.
- MiddleEndian 1y agoYeah. The FDA exists for some level of food safety and that's fine over-all. even if they sometimes make mistakes in one direction or another. But my neighbors can't randomly veto my lunch. That would be absurd lol
- chimpansteve 1y agoI guess it depends. There's been a major issue in the UK for a while regarding quite a few very iconic, decades old, live music venues. Back in the day they were in less salubrious areas of town so no one really cared, but now they're prime property with very expensive flats being put up all around them. Many of the new residents never even do so much as even visit the area before buying them, and then immediately (and sadly often successfully) put in noise complaints attempting to get the venues shut down, despite the already strict licensing laws (curfew at 10.30 at the absolute latest, no outside drinking etc).
- TulliusCicero 1y agoThat's the kind of situation where I think both sides are kinda right. I see what you're getting at here, but from the other side, it's reasonable for people to be bothered by loud noise where they live. If it was gonna be a problem, the real answer is that the government shouldn't have permitted housing right next to places that are gonna stay loud. Or maybe mandated stricter soundproofing requirements for flats.
- trollbridge 1y agoExcept there’s always been housing around these music venues. The problem is the housing went from affordable housing for working class people to “investments” for rich people.
- TulliusCicero 1y agoIn either case, people have a right to reasonable peace and quiet where they live. That this wasn't addressed when the neighborhood was more blue collar doesn't make it okay once it's not.
- cynicalpeace 1y agoIncurring your neighbor $200,000 in costs for having 7 chickens is a "reasonable restriction"
- tptacek 1y agoReally hard to over-emphasize just how small Douglas MI is; it's about 1,000 people total. An afternoon's walking distance down the beach from where they shot the ending of Road to Perdition, though. I don't know how much there is to learn from batty ordinances in tiny rural towns (western Michigan is a special kind of rural; there's some farming, but the biggest industry is hospitality for Chicagoans driving up in the summer).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- SanjayMehta 1y agoThis must be an example of the rules based order we keep hearing about.
- School-Cotton 1y agoUh… It sucks that the city didn’t correctly follow the process, but I agree with them on the underlying object-level point: you should not be able to raise loud, dirty animals in a non-rural area if your neighbors don’t want you to.
- dmoy 1y agoIs this not a rural location? I'm not sure what the definition is, but it's 10x lower population density than the city I grew up in, which isn't particularly dense.
- capyba 1y agoChickens aren’t particularly noisy, especially relative to a “non rural area”, and any mess is contained within the coop.
- trollbridge 1y agoLoud, dirty animals? So no dogs, then?
- AngryData 1y agoThis place is a tiny village, like 1,300 people, the problem here is likely someone from the city, maybe from Chicago, who moved to where they family use to own a summer cabin or launch boats out onto the lake, and then got pissed when they realized the locals grew up rural and didn't just do tourist things and like to raise animals like chickens. Ain't nobody from that town that hasn't regularly smelled chicken and cow shit and heard chickens cawing every morning their entire lives that would even notice they were there.
- tptacek 1y agoIn fairness, the village very literally exists in order to serve people from Chicago (this is Saugatuck/Douglas).
- Aurornis 1y ago> the lawsuit notes that the ordinance's wording still inherently runs afoul of due process rights. That's because the ordinance provides no clear standard, no ability for Sarkisian to appeal or contest her neighbor's complaint, and no right to a hearing. According to PLF's complaint, this effectively gives her neighbor "a standardless and unreviewable veto over Kathy's use of her own property." NIMBY policy in a nutshell: All power goes to those who object. It's strange that the city made the mistake of issuing the permit but is now trying to retroactively un-permit the chickens because one person complained. Stories like this and even the more casual HOA stories make me glad I live in an area where most families are too busy with their lives to be nit picking minutia in their neighbors' yards.
- mattigames 1y agoWith a few cameras it's probably possible to automatically determine how noisy are people in any given neighborhood, "More than 50% of the people here spend more than 80% of their day at home", maybe there should be a standard measure for it, NIMBYness-meter.
- cynicalpeace 1y ago> All power goes to those who object. I see this all the time in the private sector where if just 1 person in a team objects to a decision, the team has to jump thru many hoops to make something barely reasonable happen What happened to "just deal with it?" I think it's viewed that those words are too cruel, or not nice. But actually, when you give up those words, you end up with a society far more cruel and not nice.
- Volundr 1y agoI see the mindset you describe and I think it also hurts the ability to get feedback. People who don't feel strongly enough to want to be a roadblock if everyone else agrees will tend to silence themselves. Multiply this by the whole team and you get proposal -> crickets -> "if there are no objections I guess we move forward?", even though the whole team actually has reservations. If there's someone on the team who really truly vehemently disagrees with a direction, the team would be well advised to give serious consideration before overriding that veto, but for normal soft-disagrement we really should normalize the idea that we don't need unanimity to more forward. You'll never convince me spaces are better than tabs, but I consent to using them anyway.
- black_13 1y ago[dead]
- elcritch 1y ago> Even if the city had followed the proper timing protocols for neighbor objections, the lawsuit notes that the ordinance's wording still inherently runs afoul of due process rights. That's because the ordinance provides no clear standard, no ability for Sarkisian to appeal or contest her neighbor's complaint, and no right to a hearing. According to PLF's complaint, this effectively gives her neighbor "a standardless and unreviewable veto over Kathy's use of her own property." That’s a great way to frame the argument against Karens and NIMBYs general attitude. What right do they have to an unreviewable veto? They should at least have to prove something a public nuisance or or source of harm.
- protocolture 1y agoReminds me of my dads town. The town planner from the regional council came through to ping him on having a gravel driveway, and to cause problems with his heritage listed property having humans living in it. While he was in town he found someone with 1 more chicken than the regional council allows (7 when they decided on 6). Never mind its a town of 40 people that's effectively a bunch of farmhouses placed together on the same stretch of highway.
- resist_futility 1y agoWhat do people have against chickens? Roosters should not be allowed but hens aren't loud or particularly smelly at all. Dogs can be a much bigger nuisance.
- cynicalpeace 1y ago"roosters should not be allowed" Why? We have a rooster. He protects the hens. He crows in the morning, just like dogs bark, and F-250s rev past the neighborhood road. Where do you think chickens come from in the first place? It's just another small step to say "hens should not be allowed"
- dismantlethesun 1y agoProtects them from what may I ask? I live in a city where chickens are permitted, and my neighbors chickens are all roaming the streets free-range, and their greatest danger is cars which roosters can't stop.
- TulliusCicero 1y agoI'd imagine cats would be an issue unless you live somewhere that just has no (outdoor) cats.
- esseph 1y agoCats Hawks Possum Racoon Coyote Etc.
- IAmBroom 1y agoAnd rats and mice, which eat eggs. Roosters have been known to hunt them. They then parcel out the meat to their harem.
- RestlessMind 1y ago> Why? Because I have a right to sleep peacefully in the morning until a certain time. Just like I cannot host loud dance parties at 2AM on a Saturday or start mowing my lawn at 6AM on a Sunday. For people to coexist peacefully in a society, there have to be reasonable boundaries. > just like dogs bark... And that's not allowed either. Check out answers at https://www.reddit.com/r/Georgia/comments/17kpm52/barking_dog_what_can_i_do/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Georgia/comments/17kpm52/barking_do... or https://www.reddit.com/r/homeowners/comments/13r23zc/would_it_be_excessive_to_file_a_noise_complaint/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homeowners/comments/13r23zc/would_i...
- onionisafruit 1y ago> Sarkisian had spent $23,000 building a chicken coop and a privacy fence That’s for six chickens. They must lay golden eggs for that to pay off.
- TulliusCicero 1y agoIt's generally more of a little hobby for people than an attempt to actually save money.
- rickydroll 1y agoIt's also a culinary thing. I grow my own vegetables because they taste much better than what's in the store. Chickens raised in a small-scale chicken coop environment tend to taste much better than those raised in factory conditions.
- dagw 1y agoChickens raised in a small-scale chicken coop environment tend to taste much better than those raised in factory conditions. Sure, but chickens raised in a small-scale $20k coop probably don't taste better than the same chickens raised in an equally sized $2k, or even $200, coop.
- TulliusCicero 1y ago23k sounds ridiculous if you assume that's just materials. If she hired someone to build it for her then it's slightly less ridiculous.
- silisili 1y agoChickens are so much nicer to have around than almost any other pet. They won't bark all night, or maul a child, or leave dead birds on your doorstep. Such a weird thing to get mad about. > Sarkisian had spent $23,000 building a chicken coop and a privacy fence to shield the chickens from view I'd like to get a look at all that, it seems extremely excessive for 6 hens. I think I spent just over 1k total for 18! Nothing wrong with that, sounds like she either got took, or built them quite the palace.
- VladVladikoff 1y agoThe dogs in my neighbourhood are much louder than my chickens. Literally measured this with a decibel meter. I can hear the neighbours dog barking while I’m in my bed. I can’t hear my chickens.
- bityard 1y ago[flagged]
- IAmBroom 1y ago"No True Scotsman" fallacy. Dogs kept as pets have done this. My neighbor's dog, acquired as an adult, got overstimulated and attacked both husband and wife. The vet suggested the dog was exposed to trauma before their ownership, and had a PTSD reaction.
- bitmasher9 1y agoWe should be encouraging people to produce food, not severely punishing someone for it. Do we need a campaign for a right to basic agriculture? This reminds me a lot of the right to repair, in that it feels like a violation of how we expect to be able to use our property.
- trollbridge 1y agoWe do. Some parts of Maine have passed “right to raise food” laws.
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoWhat was not allowed prior to these "right to raise food" laws? Is it only about animals? Was there any restriction on vege patches?
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoI read something recently, I think it was on HN or linked to from discussion, about something like the opposite. And it was argued something like national security over the price effect it could have on agriculture across state or national borders. Likely ridiculous, but may have had some semi-rationalising nuance. I would have thought the US, of all places, wouldn't be placing such restrictions on liberty. I might be cross-linking a couple of different things though, so hold back that outrage. But, yes, I agree. It would also give more people an understanding of what real (non-mass-produced, heirloom) fruits and vegetables taste like. And eggs (my better half regularly buys eggs from a student at the school, the same student also, every morning, tends to the school's vegetable garden with autistic dedication and attention). Meat is a bit more difficult. Hands in the dirt is good for mental health too.
- cynicalpeace 1y agoI just built a chicken coop (nice building something with my hands) and I just put 7 chickens in there. No asking for permission with the town because of course they'll have something bureaucratic and dumb thing to say. We're on good terms with all the neighbors, and just mentioned the chickens in passing. Everyone was excited to get eggs. It was a neighborly project. We live in small town Maine, where I guess we do things differently than in Michigan.
- IAmBroom 1y ago"It's not against the law until one of your neighbors complains." True for a lot of ordinances.
- zippyman55 1y agoMy first house was in a low cost area and I loved waking up to an illegal rooster crowing! I am sure dogs are way worse.