With two planners and a community development director in place, Tooele County is ready to tackle the issue of how many and what kind of animals are allowed on rural residential properties.
Tooele County planners told the Tooele County Planning Commission Wednesday night that they have started work on an ordinance that will regulate the number of animals allowed on property zoned as rural residential.
“Essentially, what the planning staff is working on, is a draft ordinance to regulate the number of animals allowed in rural residential zoning,” said Jason Losee, Tooele County planning staff. “Staff is particularly targeting just rural residential zoning where there is predominantly residential usage to find what would be reasonable regulations.”
Losee explained that the direction the staff is going is to regulate agricultural animals based on the acreage and the kind of animal.
The county planning staff is looking at an example of two different ordinances used in other areas. Both examples use a system of points, with points being determined by the amount of land and then points being assigned to different kind of animals, to determine how many animals are allowed on the property, according to Losee.
One ordinance uses three broad categories of small, medium, and large animals to assign points while the other ordinance uses a very specific list of animals to assign points, he said.
“The idea behind this is that Tooele County is very heavy with agriculture,” Losee said. “It is very pro-agriculture county. We aren’t making any regulations or seeking to make any changes to agricultural zones.”
“This is informational,” said Tooele County Planning Commission Chairman Lynn Butterfield. “This is in preparation for more public comment and more dialogue. This is setting us up to allow us to think toward some solutions and the staff’s suggestions as a way to proceed.”
A large portion of the rural area of Tooele County erupted in protest following an October 2016 planning commission meeting when Blaine Gehring, the Tooele County planner at that time, recommended that the planning commission needed to look at updating the county’s ordinance on the number of animals allowed on rural property.
In response to a complaint, Gehring said he researched the county code and found that the only permitted animals mentioned in county code for rural residential, agriculture, and multiple use zones was four domestic animals or 10 fowl, for the production of food for the sole use of the persons occupying the premises.
Over 100 county residents showed up to the November 2016 planning commission meeting to protest the enforcement of the four animal limit.
The planning commission moved its December 2016 meeting to Deseret Peak Complex to accommodate an even larger crowd for a public hearing on the county’s animal ordinance. Over 350 people turned out for that meeting, with 45 people providing two hours of public comment on animal restrictions.
Most of the speakers at the December 2016 meeting questioned the need for a county ordinance restricting the number of animals in rural areas. They said the current restrictions of water and health regulations were sufficient.
Another 100 people from that hearing attended a May 2017 planning commission meeting where the planning commission heard representatives of the Utah Farm Bureau, the Utah Department of Agriculture, and the Tooele County Health Department talk about farm animal regulation.
The county planning staff will draft an ordinance for the planning commission to review at a future meeting. Public input will be sought, including a public hearing, before the ordinance is approved by the planning commission and sent to the county commission for consideration, according to Butterfield.