Backyard chickens remain banned in Hyattsville’s lawbooks. At its April 6, 2020, meeting, Hyattsville City Council easily defeated a measure from Councilor Danny Schaible that would have deleted city laws banning domestic chickens and other fowl.
But Schaible’s proposal would not have overturned a county-level ban on domestic fowl in areas not zoned either agricultural or rural residential. Nor would it have established regulations governing the husbandry of backyard fowl. As Route 1 Reporter has previously covered, a majority of City Council said they would not support the measure unless one or both of those concerns were addressed. But even after several meetings where those hangups were made clear, Schaible never amended his proposed legislation to incorporate any of that feedback.
As a result, the Backyard Chicken Act failed to pass by a vote of three in-favor, eight opposed.
Councilors Danny Schaible, Kevin Ward, and Carrianna Suiter voted in favor. Opposed were Councilors Bart Lawrence, Robert Croslin, Ben Simasek, Edouard Haba, Daniel Peabody, Joseph Solomon, Erica Spell-Wolf, and Mayor Candace Hollingsworth.
That was the right vote. Removing the code from Hyattsville did not make it legal, it just sought to officially ignore County . If it had passed and you got chickens you would still be doing something illegal if you were caught. Not that I’m against that sort of thing necessarily, just didn’t think the injustice was great enough to warrant the City taking an “in-action” vote.