Carbondale Reporter

The Marion City Council is reconsidering the city's current ordinances dealing with animals and other livestock after several citizens have complained about the laws on the books.

Several residents addressed council during their April 24th meeting after receiving violations for the city's animal and livestock code. Three different households attended the meeting to ask for exemptions to the code after they received the violation notifications. Each case involved confusion over egg-laying chickens.

"The way we've always adjudicated this is quite literally the way the ordinance reads. If there's some evidence that indicates that this existed prior to the March 2019 passing of the ordinance, then we let it pass. That's why the goat exists down here, which is what everybody wants to talk about," Mayor Michael Absher said during the meeting. "I'll be honest. I don't think goats, chickens or anything else belong in town. I just don't know. That's just my personal feeling. I also don't know what other than smells and this, that and the other, which is variable."

Marion’s current city ordinance dealing with animals and livestock has a few components that played a part in discussion at the meeting. The code identifies domestic animals as any domesticated “dog, cat, sheep, horse, cow, goat, swine, fowl, duck, goose, turkey, hare, pheasant and other birds,” but describes livestock as “ass, bison, calf, cattle, chicken, donkey, duck, fowl, goat, goose, sheep, swine or turkey." The code bans city residents from having livestock, but it’s redefined without mentioning chickens. Residents are allowed to have up to ten total animals on their properties in the city, “excluding chickens and fish” which presumes people within the city are keeping chickens.

The ordinance does give the mayor authority to override any violations as he sees fit for any cases that existed before the ordinance was passed in 2019, which the petitioners were at the meeting to request. They pointed out these inconsistencies and also spoke about the communities surrounding them that allowed chickens or clearly pointed out in their code that they weren’t allowed. The first petitioner has had his chickens for over a decade, having spoken to the city’s legal counsel before getting his chickens to ensure that they would be fine. All of the petitioners said they had spoken with all their neighbors who were completely fine with the chicken that they kept, ranging from 10-20 per household.

One petitioner wanted to be able to start raising chickens and felt the ordinance was unfair. Commissioner John Barwick said he agreed the ordinance is confusing. The almost hour-long discussion ended with the commissioners directing city staff to clean up the language of the ordinance to help guide their decisions on the cases in the future.