If the greener residents of Delaware succeed in their efforts to legalize backyard chickens, city planning commissioner Jim Halter wants to know one thing: “Who’s gonna be the poultry police?”

The Delaware Planning Commission was presented with a memorandum on Jan. 4 from city Manager Thomas Homan titled, “Urban Chicken Regulations.”

Much frivolity ensued.

There was talk of “illicit chickens” and of “deputizing coyotes” and of the slippery slope “from chickens to rabbits and goats.”

Planning director David Efland said was merely a messenger and he didn’t have a dog (or was it a fowl?) in the fight.

“Sustainable Delaware is interested in the topic of urban chickens and city council asked my staff to investigate the current regulations and to consider changes to them that would allow families to keep chickens,” he said/

In 2010, the city of Bexley passed an ordinance allowing residents to keep “no more than five dogs, cats and chickens.”

Efland said current Delaware regulations allow for the keeping of only one chicken per acre of property owned, which essentially serves as an embargo within city limits.

“What’s wrong with the existing rules?” Halter asked. “I say just let it lay.”

Halter asked, “Will there be architectural standards for the coops?”

Commission chair Joe DiGenova grew nostalgic when thinking back “to the 1950s and 1960s when Italian families would keep chickens and rabbits. It was an ethnic thing. But then zoning came along and we joined the 20th century.”

Efland said the practice of keeping urban chickens began at least a decade ago on the West Coast before migrating, “ironically, to the Midwest and urban areas adjacent to farm country.”

He told the commission the goal of an urban chicken ordinance would not be solely to allow for the practice of keeping chickens but to “protect neighbors from nuisance and the possible effects the practice might have on property values.”

To that end, Efland said regulations could require:

• Coops that are fully weather enclosed and limited in overall size.

• Feed to be kept in rodent-proof containers.

• The prohibition of roosters.

• The prohibition of the slaughter of chickens and the sale of their eggs.

• Limits on the number of chickens (generally three or four).

• Permits, inspections and fees of up to $25.

Efland said his staff was awaiting direction from city council.