Bellingham Planning Board votes to strip animal-count limits from livestock bylaw

BELLINGHAM -- May 8, 2025, Bellingham Planning Board unanimously recommended a livestock zoning amendment and debated swapping a required sidewalk for road repairs in the Harmony subdivision. The board voted 5-0 Thursday to send a change to Chapter 240, Article 6, Section 240-32 to town meeting, removing numerical animal limits and a six-months-or-older age qualifier from the definition of "livestock raising" so the Board of Health can write space-based regulations. A town official identified as Dylan said the current bylaw allows residents on quarter-acre lots to legally keep up to nine chickens and a goat, calling the change necessary to address a surge of backyard farming since the COVID-19 pandemic. Separately, staff briefed the board on a proposed minor amendment to the 2020 Harmony subdivision approval that would substitute Cross Street drainage and pavement repairs, valued against a $232,500 bond, for a sidewalk that engineers say would require eminent domain takings and removal of mature screening trees. The board leaned toward treating the change as a minor amendment, with no formal vote taken; the item returns May 22.