WEST BOYLSTON – A proposed Board of Health regulation for placing “minimum standards” for keeping farm animals not regulated under the Right to Farm Bylaw is ruffling some feathers in town.
Molly McArthur, chairperson of the West Boylston Agricultural Commission, and Amy Malo, also on the commission, acknowledged that the Board of Health’s regulation is similar to Article 27, a proposed bylaw that failed at a Town Meeting vote May 20, 2024.
“It went down in flames,” Malo said. “Obviously, the town people were against it.”
A public hearing took place on the Board of Health’s proposed regulation March 25. No formal decision of the Board of Health has been made. The public hearing continues April 14.
“It’s not a bylaw. It’s going to be a regulation,” McArthur said. “A bylaw would have to be voted on in at a Town Meeting and a regulation of the Board of Health, because they are a regulatory body, they can just make the regulation.”
Dr. Barur Rajeshkumar, West Boylston Select Board member, has also chimed in on the matter.
“At Town Meeting, I did not support the previous chicken bylaw, and I stand by that decision. It was not the right approach for our town,” Rajeshkumar said in a statement. “The Board of Health has a responsibility to address public health and nuisance concerns. That matters. But we should not recreate, through regulation, what residents were not comfortable approving.” In the Board of Health regulations, there will be a required license and annual fee of $10 for residents who own farm animals and who own six or more chickens or other fowl. Currently, there is no required license.
“Currently, West Boylston does not have any regulations that pertain to, I’ll say, hobby animal keepers,” McArthur said. “There’s a whole other set of regulations that come from the states for legally operating farms. So, obviously, they have their own set of regulations.”
Malo questions the rationale of the proposed restrictions.
Too restrictive?
“The problem with these regulations is that they are extremely restrictive,
