Westbrook’s chickens, bees and bunnies that faced eviction from their homes have received an extension on their lease – at least, temporarily.

The city council put a halt Monday night to the enforcement of the zoning ordinance as it pertains to farm animals and other non-traditional pets and referred the matter to the planning board for a recommendation.

This news was welcomed by Chestnut Street residents Bob Ledoux and Mark Leclair, who own chickens and bees, respectively, who will now get to keep them.

The city gave Leclair a citation for his bees last week after the zoning board of appeals had told Ledoux he’d have to get rid of his chickens. Ledoux had appealed a citation he had received after a neighbor complained about his chickens.

The two recent complaints against Ledoux and Leclair have forced the city to face the question of what animals are appropriate in city’s most densely populated residential zoning district. The city will now look into a possible change to the ordinance to spell out what kinds of animals residents can have. For now, though, the city’s code enforcement officers are not going to issue any more violations to residents who keep farm animals or other non-traditional pets.

“It’s not over yet,” said Ledoux, who enjoys keeping chickens because he’s disabled and can’t work and the chickens keep him busy.

Before the two complaints, the city’s ordinance didn’t include language saying what kinds of animals residents can keep in residential zones, although more rural residential zones allow for farming activities. According to City Administrator Jerre Bryant, keeping these types of pets wasn’t a problem until the city received the complaints.

Leclair, who keeps six beehives in his backyard, is adamantly against having to get rid of his honeybees, which he’s had on Chestnut Street for nine years with no problems. In fact, he said, the bees are beneficial to the neighborhood and not a nuisance or hazard, improving the neighborhood’s flower beds through pollination.

He also said the bees serve a practical purpose for him because his wife and daughter are allergic to gluten, a binder in many foods, and honey is a gluten-free food. The Leclairs consume about 30 pounds of honey a year from the 200 or so pounds they usually get from their bees. The rest goes as gifts to family, friends and neighbors.

The city’s code enforcement office issued Ledoux a citation for violating the ordinance in regard to commercial farming for raising about a dozen chickens in his backyard. The citation came after Ledoux’s neighbor, Pat Sargent, complained that the chickens were noisy on many occasions in the middle of the night during the summer, a point she reiterated Monday at a council meeting.

Ledoux appealed the citation to the city Zoning Board of Appeals, which judged he was not doing commercial farming, but the chickens still had to go because they were not considered to be an appropriate use of the land at a residential property.

After that decision, an anonymous complaint against Leclair for keeping bees forced the code enforcement office to issue a citation against him for the same reason.

At a meeting Monday night, the city council voted unanimously to refer the question of whether keeping farm animals is considered an acceptable use of property in residential zones to the planning board. The planning board is expected to review the matter and make a recommendation. The council will then decide if it wants to change the ordinance to make farm animals illegal in the city’s most densely populated residential zone. Until that time, the code enforcement office will not issue any more violations.

The complaint against Leclair cited four reasons he had to get rid of the bees, all of which centered on people being stung and all of which he disputes. The reasons included the danger posed to people with allergic reactions to bee stings and the bees’ unlimited access to workers building the Mitchell Farms subdivision going in behind Chestnut Street. The bees could also attract children who could get stung. The last reason was the possibility of swarming.

“It’s really all about a lack of knowledge about the bees,” said Leclair, who’s allergic to bees himself but gets a shot to lessen the effect of stings.

Leclair said the possibility of being stung by a honeybee is minimal. They’re far too busy collecting honey to worry about stinging people, which is a last resort and which ends their life, he said. He’s kept bees for 23 years and been stung about 25 times, all while extracting honey from the beehives, which agitates the bees.

“I’m smart enough to know if there’s a bunch of people working out here, I’m not going to be extracting honey,” he said of that.

Leclair said his wife, Donna, has been stung once and his daughter, Courtney, once in all that time. His two boys, Heath and Reece, have never been stung, and the neighborhood kids who play in their backyard near the bees have never had a problem, either, even when Donna Leclair was taking care of other people’s children for a time at their home.

As for swarming, Leclair said when bees swarm it’s not like a horror movie where bees are stinging people. Bees swarm because of overcrowding in their hive. Half the hive fattens up on honey and then leaves and makes another queen somewhere else, he said. They travel in a tight group and cluster in a new location. Leclair said it’s the bees’ natural way of controlling the population in their hive.

He’s had four swarms in the nine years on Chestnut Street, two of which came this spring. One went from one hive to an empty hive 5 feet away. The other went to a bush 20 feet away and clustered into a tight ball around a branch. Leclair’s neighbor told him about it, and he went out in a T-shirt and shorts, placed a hive box under the bees and shook the branch so the bunch fell into the box. He was not stung.

“They’re too fat and happy to sting,” he said.

To Jim Martel, who lives next door to Leclair, the bees aren’t a problem at all. “The beehives and I have been getting along for eight years,” he said at Monday’s meeting.

Sargent said she didn’t have a problem with the bees, and Leclair should be able to keep them. Ledoux’s chickens, however, she still has a problem with. “The noise is nerve-wracking, not soothing,” she said.

Other people spoke up in support of Leclair and Ledoux Monday night, including Councilor Drew Gattine, who said he supports having animals of this type residential zones, within reason. Longtime Westbrook resident Leona Glidden told the council through a letter that she once had a neighbor complain about noise from her kids, but no one made her get rid of them. No one spoke out against having farm animals residential zones Monday night.

While Leclair’s bees are still safe for the time being, City Attorney Bill Dale informed Ledoux he should ask the Zoning Board of Appeals to reconsider their decision against him as a procedural matter, at which time they would table the item until the council decides what animals or insects it wants in the residential zone.