Board of Aldermen 12-11-2018 Page 38
Attorney Bolton
Well this is a Zoning Ordinance and in Zoning there is something called “Prior Non-Conforming Uses”
and basically that means if you undertake a use of property and it is legal and permitted by zoning
when you undertake that use, that subsequent amendments to the zoning ordinance does not affect
your use of the property. | think it is an interesting approach to say you are going to amortize over the
life span of your existing chickens.
In some States amortization of non-conforming uses has been permitted. | know of no case where it
has been permitted in New Hampshire. If you are talking about reducing the number of chickens or
expanding your set back requirements or expanding your lot size requirements, that will certainly impact
people who want to undertake chicken rearing following the passage of these future amendments. But
| would say it probably doesn’t impact the continued use by people who establish that use while it is
legal. So they would not have to abide by any increase over the 20 foot setback or any of the other
dimension requirements.
Alderman O’Brien
Thank you Madam President, just a point of order or clarirfication. By use of a sunset clause, the
difference between that and the Chairman re-introducing it at a later date, the sunset clause by the
virtue of the motion, sets a specific target date of one year or whaver is deemed within that motion that
it will come up before the Board. It doesn’t have to be remembered by the Chairman if the Chairman
should change or the Board should change, the sunset actually affects the date. Am | correct in that
interpretation of that?
President Wilshire
| believe so yes.
Attorney Bolton
How that would play into a zoning law and the doctrine of prior non-conforming uses, at this point | am
willing to opine on, it is unknown.
Alderman Dowd
| am not in favor of the sunset clause; in some instances like the parking there was no issue with if we
stopped it, it didn’t hurt anybody other than they didn’t have a place to park. But in this instance, people
may have spent money conforming with all the rest of the ordinance to have chickens and if it is a
sunset, all of a sudden that is going to go away.
We talked about Code Enforcement not having time to go out and enforce the current ordinance but
who the heck is going to go out and be able to recognize the chickens and know they haven’t been
replaced? | am not going to support the amended amendment.
Alderman Gidge
Chickens aren’t even housebroken when they are outside. We raise chickens in the south end. You
don’t want chickens. First, you can’t keep them in and then you can’t keep things out. But! find this
extremely interesting, this talk about chickens has been more exciting than the talk about a place to
have a play. 14 angry aldermen over chickens.
Alderwoman Kelly
| just want to point out that we’ve had multiple public hearings. The first public hearing in this chamber,
everybody was in favor, Director Marchant specifically has said multiple times that this is the number
