By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
Ortonville-Village chickens were back on the table Wednesday night
At issue during the special meeting on Feb. 21 was deliberation of a village council proposed ordinance for chicken owners in the village. The row began in December, when the village council tasked the village planning commission with drafting an ordinance, then created one of their own. The village council ordinance included such provisions as a chicken coop would have to be 100 feet from any property line and that anyone who wants chickens would need written approval from all adjacent neighbors.
Then at the Jan. 22 meeting, the council voted 5-1 to send the proposed village council ordinance for review by the village attorney, Michael Gildner.
Gildner addressed the council Wednesday night to a packed room.
“The guidance or suggestion would be that when you have any kind of ordinance, when you have locational restrictions that are in there, you’ve got areas of land that meet those restrictions,” said Gildner to the board at the meeting. “You cannot prohibit something under the guise of regulating it.”
Gildner also went on to say that all the proposed ordinance would still need some formatting fixes before it was ready to be reviewed by the board once more.
Residents present at the meeting, had a time limit to speak of one minute due to council members having to leave by 8:30 p.m., as stated by Wills. Some residents deferring their minutes to others who spoke.
“You guys came to us, you asked us to do this, Dec. 5th. By Jan. 9th, we were complete, and that’s with Christmas and New Years thrown in there.

We had everything together,” said Melanie Nivelt, a member of the planning commission and a member of the sub-committee in charge of drafting an ordinance pertaining to the chickens. “We have to, as far as policy and procedure, we have to present to the planning commission first, then if we all agree, we make the recommendation to council. We were going to present to planning commission but Mark Robinson could not make the meeting, so as a courtesy to Mark, we waited. And by waiting, they came in and did what they did.”
Nivelt went on to say they had three weeks worth of research that they had compiled, and that she had asked the council prior to that if they would be wasting their time, and the council assured them they would not be. She continued with four minutes, one of her own and three deferred from other residents.
Bob McArthur supported Nivelt.
“I deferred my minute and it was well spent,” he said to the board.
Karen Sleva, village council member said chickens roaming the village is her concern with the ordinance.
“I will say that I was the only council person to stand up, to write an ordinance about the roaming at large, I wrote it for the last meeting, we will be approving it at the next meeting, this is something that should have been done by the village manager last April or May when the roaming issue started, ”she said. “So I agree with you. Roaming at large was the only thing I presented to the council. And I was the only council member to do this.”
The chicken ban was implemented on Aug. 28, 2017 by a 4-3 vote by the village council to direct the village manager to enforce the current animal ordinance that makes owning a chickens along with cows, horses, pigs, goats, pigeons, geese, ducks or any other animal, fowl or insect except birds, dogs, cats or other harmless and domesticated household pets unlawful.
Since that time residents have protested.
The animal ordinance dates back to 1982. However, in October the board of trustees voted 3-2 to not enforce the current ordinance banning chickens and to look into options for a future ordinance.