Chicken permit ruffles some feathers at Zoning Board

By ARTIE KRONENFELD

The Zoning Board of Appeals approved a special permit for William J. Durkin and Ramina Ghods to continue raising chickens at their Waltham home.

Durkin and Ghods told the board at its Oct. 7 meeting that they’ve kept chickens at their house at 17 Charlotte St. for the last two years without incident. 

They also said that when they originally obtained the chickens, they called the city and received a response that Waltham’s chicken laws were outdated and shouldn’t be a concern.

Two months ago, however, they received a cease-and-desist letter in the mail requiring them to either obtain a special permit from the ZBA or get rid of the chickens.

Durkin explained that they have six hens, which they keep in a coop 10 feet away from all property lines and more than 25 feet from all dwellings, screened from neighbors by fences and vegetation. They told the board they’re complying with the city’s relevant zoning ordinances. He added that they’ve prevented any rodent problems by storing their chicken feed in closed containers, which they remove from the coop nightly. 

He said the chickens are quiet and unobtrusive, and he said that neighbors have repeatedly “expressed their enjoyment for the birds.” The chicken owners presented one letter expressing a neighbor’s support. When asked why they didn’t have more, Durkin said that he and Ghods hadn’t asked neighbors for letters to bring to the board, explaining that they assumed a neighbor’s complaint prompted the cease-and-desist order and didn’t want to put anyone on the spot. 

The letter they presented, he said, was volunteered by Jessica Powers, who lives across the street from the couple. In it, she testified that the couple responsibly planned their chicken setup and answered neighbors’ questions.

Another neighbor, Silvestre Buscemi, came to the board meeting to ask the board to deny Durkin and Ghods’ application on the grounds that a continued chicken presence would create rodent issues by providing an open source of feed.

“They’re great chickens. I mean, they’re quiet, the whole bit, but they’re just going to allow rodents to come in,” Buscemi said.

He testified that he had found a dead rodent at the back of his yard, toward Durkin and Ghods’ property, and provided a picture along with a letter from his pest control company supporting his concerns.

The board voted unanimously to grant the permit, provided the owners agree to limit themselves to six chickens and install rodent traps.

Multifloor construction

The board heard a case from the Middlesex Human Services Agency, a nonprofit providing shelter to people experiencing homelessness, for a special permit to convert an existing attic space at 118 Prospect St. into living space as part of a renovation to make the building a recovery house for women. The attic addition would measure approximately 100 feet, less than 10% of the building’s ground floor area.

Before the case started, ZBA member Glenna Gelineau announced that she was a member of the MHSA’s board of directors but wasn’t involved in this construction. She stated that she believed she could make an impartial decision about the building and remained on the board to hear the case.

The board voted unanimously to grant the permit.

The board also agreed unanimously to allow Branden and Margaret Roumanis to withdraw a request to construct a single-family one-and-a-half story home at 103 Clark Ave. that would have encroached into the property’s front and back setbacks. The petitioners requested to resubmit their application to the board because of a printing error in the public hearing notice published in The Boston Globe.