Public Hearings Mar 6:Zoning Changes to Allow Chickens, Bees

http://jeffco.us/news/news_item_np_T9_R2906.htm
[headline=2:3uga6ky0]Public Hearings for Zoning Changes to Allow Chickens, Bees and Consolidate Districts[/headline:3uga6ky0]
Residents of unincorporated Jefferson County may soon have the opportunity to keep chickens and bees in their backyards. As a result of many inquiries and requests to keep chickens and/or bees on residentially zoned properties, Jeffco Planning & Zoning staff is proposing a change to the Jefferson County Zoning Resolution that would allow a limited number of chickens and bees.

The proposed changes will be heard at the following public hearings:

Planning Commission
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Hearing Room 1
Jefferson County Administration and Courts Facility
100 Jefferson County Parkway
Golden, CO

Board of County Commissioners
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Hearing Room 1
Jefferson County Administration and Courts Facility
100 Jefferson County Parkway
Golden, CO

Currently, chickens and bees are allowed in the county’s Agricultural Districts and chickens are allowed in the Suburban Residential Districts, some Mountain Residential Districts and the Residential-One District.

The main proposed changes to include:

• Allowing bees and chickens on single family detached, two-family dwelling or duplex residential lots through a miscellaneous permit.
• Maximum number of chickens allowed is six. No roosters allowed.
• Allowing one bee hive for each 4,000 square feet of lot area.
• Permits for either bees or chickens may be revoked at any time for failure to comply with the provisions of the Zoning Resolution or any other local, state or federal laws.

Additionally, staff has been reorganizing the Zone Districts in the Zoning Resolution. The districts are currently broken into one section for each specific zone district. For example, the Agricultural-One District has a section, Agricultural-Two District has a section, and Agricultural-Thirty-five District has a section.

Planning Staff has consolidated all related zone districts into one section and has reformatted the information on uses, setbacks, heights and lot sizes into chart format, rather than in paragraph format. So with the consolidation, all Agricultural Zone Districts are shown in the Agricultural District section, rather than being split into three different sections.

The consolidation was completed for the agricultural, commercial, corridor, industrial, mobile home, mountain residential, residential, and suburban residential districts. The goal of the consolidation is not to change any of the existing uses or standards within the zone districts but to simply group together like sections. There are a few minor housekeeping-type changes also included in the revisions.

A draft of the changes can be found online. It can also be navigated from the main Planning & Zoning page, http://www.jeffco.us/planning by following the link under the “Zoning Resolution Revisions” announcement.

For more information, please contact Heather Gutherless at 303-271-8716 / or Nina Ruiz at 303-271-8732 / .