Overflow crowd postpones Westport animal regulation hearing

WESTPORT — The long-awaited hearing last Thursday for the Board of Health's proposed Keeping of Animals Regulation was postponed due to a capacity crowd in the Town Hall meeting room, health officials confirmed.

The meeting has been rescheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 10, 7 p.m. at the Town Hall Annex gymnasium.

“We had already moved it from the annex to the Town Hall because of the anticipated crowd because Town Hall has an overflow room,” Board of Health member Maury May said. “But neither the BOS (Board of Selectmen) room nor the overflow room were big enough to hold the crowd, so we moved it to the annex basketball court where we can set up a couple of hundred chairs."

May said the turnout from the farming community was "a big surprise."

Board of Health Chairman Phil Weinberg said the entire meeting room, hallway and stairway were filled with people last Thursday.

The regulation, if adopted by the board, will apply to homeowners who keep non-companion animals mostly outdoors such as chickens, cattle, llamas, goats and sheep. It stems from a landmark animal abuse case in 2016 at a tenant farm off American Legion Highway.

An animal action committee, which formed after the removal of more than 1,000 animals from that tenant farm, decided local officials need to keep tabs on the whereabouts of all animals to prevent animal abuse and public nuisances.

The 2016 Medeiros abuse case led to charges from the state attorney general’s office and was the second abuse case on that same property in a six-year span.

The regulation draft states that the purpose of the regulation is to ensure “the protection of public health and safety and emergency planning, and that said animals are kept in a manner and under conditions that will not cause harm or the threat of harm to the public health and safety, the environment, and the health and safety of the animals.”

Hobby farmers and other backyard animal owners must register annually for free, according to the draft. A form will ask for the number and type of animals kept on the owners’ properties and for contact information, which will especially come in handy for the police and fire departments, along with animal control, if animals escape, the draft notes.

A health official will have the right to inspect the properties, ensuring that the animals have a clean living environment, potable water, food and appropriate shelter in good condition.

In an email, Weinberg said residents can keep free-range chickens but those chickens must be confined within their owners’ properties.