GREENFIELD — As the city considers whether to pass a noise ordinance, Agricultural Commission members shared their views on the matter Wednesday night, agreeing that the city’s right to farm designation should exempt farmers from the ordinance.
Precinct 7 residents Kate Broughton and Mary Sirum presented a plan to the Community Relations Committee on Nov. 17 to draft local noise regulations after numerous complaints of alleged excessive noise coming from events held at the Franklin County Fairgrounds on Wisdom Way.
However, since Greenfield is designated as a right to farm city under the state, Agricultural Commission members argued that farmers and those who have more than five acres of land have rights to certain noises that the ordinance cannot override.
“If I’m a farmer and I’m up there with my tractor going and I’ve got more than five acres, I have a right to do that,” commission member Elizabeth Nett explained. “Noise [regulations] apply differently to farmers.”
One of the more controversial protections of the city’s right to farm status, the right to keep roosters on lots of land larger than five acres, also came under discussion, as commission members agreed that legal rooster ownership, as noisy as it may be, should be exempt from the ordinance.
Rooster noise complaints led city councilors to weigh farmers’ rights with reports of disturbances last year after Public Safety Commissioner David Moscaritolo filed a petition to ban the possession of roosters without a special permit in suburban and urban residential districts.
“2 a.m., 2:30 a.m. 3:30 a.m., 3:45 a.m., 5 a.m. — these are the times that my wife and I have been woken up almost every morning for about a year and a half,” Moscaritolo recounted at a City Council meeting last year. “My neighbors on Davis Street adopted roosters and chickens. I’m fine with the chickens, but the roosters in this residential area, to me, seem to be unjustified and a problem. … I don’t think any suburban house needs to have a rooster.”’
Ultimately, the petition was halted, as city councilors believed that it directly contradicted the city’s right to farm status.
“My hope is that neighbors will be good neighbors to each other. Those relations get tense sometimes and so, potentially, the Agricultural Commission or some other body of the city could step in to help negotiate movement of the coop or whatever their solution may be that could remedy the situation,” Precinct 5 City Councilor Marianne Bullock previously said. “As someone who is a chicken owner and who has a rooster problem in my neighborhood, I really see both sides of this issue.”
Commission member Denise Leonard brought up guard dogs as another example of a potentially noisy, but standard, farming practice that must be protected Wednesday evening. She explained that the police once paid a visit at her home late at night because one of her guard dogs was barking, and she had to explain that the dog was doing its job and she had a right to keep it under right to farm.
“If my guard dogs are out barking, I have a right to do this … [my dog] is out with the sheep 24/7 and that’s considered normal farming practices,” Leonard said. “Police show up at my house one night around midnight — ‘Is that your dog?’ [the police asked] ‘yes, ‘ ‘Is he barking?’ ‘Yes, I would go out and shoot whatever he’s barking at, but you wouldn’t like that either.'”
The Appointments and Ordinances Committee will further discuss the proposed noise ordinance at its meeting Dec. 10. Both Nett and commission member Sydney St. John said they planned to attend to advocate for farmers’ rights.
“The farms that are here, they’re making a living. They precede and should supersede the noise ordinance because this is normal farm operation,” St. John said. “Greenfield, for a right to farm city, has a lot of restrictions in place on what you can do in terms of farming activities … we should try to be cautious of putting further restrictions on a thing that is our right in the state.”