Is the Fowl Ban Foul?

Croton is set to prohibit pigeons village-wide, with no grandfathering. The record shows one known pigeon keeper — told yes by village staff — and a ban whose most persistent advocate disclosed that the pigeons were coming to his own street.

croton.news · July 17, 2026 · drawn from the village meeting record; every quotation links to the transcript and video

Sometime after the new year, it will be illegal to keep a pigeon anywhere in Croton-on-Hudson — outdoors, indoors, coop or basement. Local Law Introductory No. 10 of 2026, now circulating for referral review, would prohibit the keeping of roosters and pigeons village-wide, with a hard compliance date of January 1, 2027, and no grandfathering for birds already here.

The public record shows exactly one person who wants to keep pigeons in Croton. He told the Zoning Board of Appeals in June that he called the village before buying his house, asked whether he could keep them, and was told yes; he pulled a permit, built a coop, and had it signed off.

The record also shows who pressed hardest for the ban: Deputy Mayor Len Simon, who disclosed to his colleagues in May — on the record, after seeking the attorney's advice — that he lives "on a street where there's some discussion of some pigeons" 103:14▶ arriving soon. Whether the resulting law is sound animal policy, or a code rewritten at the speed of one street's displeasure, is the question a public hearing will have to settle this fall.

A housecleaning law grows teeth

It began as tidying. Local Law Introductory No. 3 of 2026 was a cleanup of the zoning code — inconsistencies, outdated definitions, and the number of fowl allowed on residential properties. A public hearing opened and closed on March 25, and the emails started.

By the time the board adopted the cleanup on April 8, the animal provisions had been pulled out entirely. "We've removed the foul provisions," 37:41▶ one board member said — and the board would return to them once the village planner had researched what other communities do.

Then came the tell: "we did get some feedback around nuisance pest species, pigeons." 37:41▶

"Pigeon emails"

When the Village Board finally took up the animal rules at its May 27 work session, Village Manager Bryan Healy was candid about the timing: the draft definition of fowl "was written last week before we started getting all the pigeons. Pigeon emails." 111:39▶

Simon arrived with research. He reported that Larchmont, Pelham, Pelham Manor, Port Chester, and Rye Brook ban pigeons entirely, that Ardsley requires village board approval after a public hearing, and that Tarrytown banned pigeons in 1998 but grandfathered existing owners.

"I think it's important that we address at some point in this process the issue of pigeons," 103:14▶ Simon said.

The disclosure itself was orderly. Simon had raised it with counsel beforehand — "he asked me about disclosing before," 102:55▶ Joshua Subin said — and Subin's opinion was that disclosure sufficed: "He does not have to recuse in my opinion given those circumstances." 105:24▶

"I would have been in favor of us addressing pigeons under any circumstances regardless of where I lived," 103:14▶ Simon added.

Mayor Brian Pugh said "the health concerns are really at the heart of the pigeon issue," 110:52▶ while allowing that he is neither an epidemiologist nor a public health officer and could not speak to the actual impact.

Healy was blunt about why pigeons were suddenly the subject: a specific case was headed to the zoning board for a code interpretation. "That's gonna go before the zoning board," 137:14▶ Healy said.

The scale of the problem was equally specific. "We have one person who has desire to do this," 142:17▶ Healy said. Four emails had come in from residents concerned about the pigeons, the board was told.

Trustee Nora Nicholson asked whether the village needed a moratorium on pigeons while it worked. Subin thought that "a bit much to go for a moratorium" 137:05▶ given the scope of the problem at hand.

By evening's end there was little doubt where things were headed. "It doesn't seem to be any disagreement that we're moving in a direction of no pigeons," 139:23▶ Trustee Maria Slippen said. Trustee Stacey Nachtaler was more compact: "No pigeons. Because they fly." 129:29▶

Simon closed the loop: "it appears like there is a consensus against the pigeons, we wanna do it the right way, obviously, the legal way," 131:17▶ Simon said.

The man at 148

By June 16 the pigeons had a hearing of their own — nominally, a Zoning Board of Appeals session to interpret a single sentence of the zoning code: what counts as fowl, whether fowl may be penned within 50 feet of a lot line, and what qualifies as a domestic animal. "I'm basically just asking for an interpretation of this sentence," 0:50▶ Village Engineer Vincent Salanitro said.

The sentence is old. "the village was incorporated in late nineteen thirty one," 22:01▶ board chair James Tuman said, and the provision dates to the original code.

Then the residents spoke. Andy Simmons of 146 Old Post Road North told the board the coop next door was no trouble — his household is "not concerned about this at all." 6:08▶

A man who gave his name as Tony (sp) and his address as 148 said he bought the house for the pigeons. "I called you guys over here, and I, like, to find out if I could keep the pigeons, and I got the answer, yes," 7:52▶ he said. "I spent a lots of money building the shed. I pulled a permit," 8:07▶ he said, and the village signed it off.

"I'm not feeling very welcomed, honestly, right now," 8:19▶ he told the board, asking what he had to do to move his birds from the basement into the finished coop: "having them in the boxes in the basement, they're honestly dying from the heat." 10:22▶

Allison Rosen of Old Post Road urged the opposite outcome. "I support the pending village ban on pigeons," 14:11▶ Rosen said, cataloguing diseases — cryptococcus, psittacosis, avian flu alerts — and warning of droppings, rats, and racing flocks settling on neighbors' fences and gutters.

The board's deliberation proved the engineer's point about ambiguity. Bill Goldsmith said he could find no definition of fowl in state law, county code, or the village's own zoning code, so "I think you need to go as broad as possible." 20:32▶ The board voted to read fowl as a bird of any kind — pigeons included.

On the 50-foot clause the members split over a comma. Doug Olcott warned that the strict reading meant "We're effectively saying to have foul, you need to have a 100 foot wide lot," 30:19▶ wider than most lots in the village, and the board voted 3-2 that fowl may be penned or housed within 50 feet of a lot line.

Goldsmith, on the losing side of that vote, said the split itself was "really interesting information for the village to take into account that it's not unanimous." 33:43▶

The practical upshot went the pigeon keeper's way: under the code as interpreted, the pigeons at 148 were legal — fowl, permitted up to 25 per property, and allowed near the lot line.

The health case meets the research

A week later the Village Board took the subject back up at a work session — "perhaps the hottest topic of the evening," 79:32▶ in Pugh's words — with the research the mayor had asked for in hand.

Healy briefed the board on Cornell and Penn State husbandry guidance and a USDA primer on raising pigeons — 27 cubic feet of space per pair, with allowance for squabs.

Then the health agencies. The New York City health department notes diseases associated with pigeon droppings but adds that "the risk of contracting a pigeon related disease is rare," 82:16▶ Healy reported.

Westchester County's sanitary code covers parrots; as for pigeons, "they don't have anything related to pigeons," 83:43▶ Healy said. The county public health sanitarian he spoke with knew of no reported pigeon illnesses, at least based on her knowledge, he said.

The ban's health rationale, in other words, did not get stronger with study. The law did. Simon asked whether the draft covered grandfathering so that nothing would be grandfathered, and whether a species barred from the yard would be barred from the house as well. "If it's prohibited, it's prohibited," 85:58▶ Healy said — outside or inside.

No grandfathering

On July 1 the board introduced Local Law Introductory No. 10 of 2026 — the resolution moved by Simon and adopted 4-0. The draft prohibits keeping roosters and pigeons.

Simon asked that enforcement language be spelled out, and said the board had discussed making explicit that "there was to be no grandfathering," 18:15▶ and that species barred from the grounds are "not allowed also to be within the home." 18:15▶

Village Attorney Lori Lee Dickson explained the fixed January 1, 2027 deadline as a consensus choice, "providing people with the opportunity to rehome or find sanctuary or relocate." 20:17▶ The not-permitted list will also pick up roosters and cockerels.

As for the path there: "a zoning code text amendment takes a minimum of sixty days," 22:08▶ Dickson said — county and local referrals, then a public hearing — and it would be "September before you would be able to actually adopt a law once it's finalized." 22:39▶ Adoption in September, filing with the state, and a three-month runway to the deadline.

Interpretation

Is the fowl ban foul? On process, no. Simon disclosed his street before the discussion began, counsel cleared his participation, and the prohibition still has to survive a public hearing. Nothing in the record shows a rule broken.

But "no rule broken" is a low bar, and the record supports three harder statements.

First, the law's only known target did everything right. He called the village before buying the house and was told yes. He pulled a permit; the village signed it off. And when the zoning board was asked to read the code as written, it read the code in his favor: the pigeons at 148 are legal today.

Second, the stated justification got weaker the more the village studied it. The ban was framed as a health question — but the research the mayor asked for came back with the city health department calling the risk of contracting a pigeon-related disease "rare" 82:16▶ and the county's sanitary code containing nothing on pigeons at all. The health case shrank. The law grew.

Third, the one provision that would have spared him was deliberately removed. Tarrytown — the model cited to the board — grandfathered its existing owners in 1998. Croton's draft rules grandfathering out, at the urging of the trustee who told his colleagues the pigeons were coming to his own street.

Any one of these facts is unremarkable. Together, they describe a village-wide prohibition, reaching indoors as well as out, whose entire practical effect falls on a single permitted coop — advanced most persistently by a trustee with a disclosed stake in the outcome. The public hearing this fall is where the village decides whether that is animal policy, or proximity policy.

If you want a say

Nothing here is law yet. Local Law Introductory No. 10 is a draft under referral — the Planning Board, the Waterfront Advisory Committee, and the Westchester County Planning Board all get to comment — and the code on the books today, as the zoning board read it, still permits pigeons.

The village's own calendar leaves three openings. First, the referral period: the Planning Board's July 14 meeting was canceled, so its review lands at the end of July, and referral comments can force revisions — the manager's fastest-case schedule, Healy noted, "assumes no changes." 23:20▶

Second, the public hearing. Under the calendar Healy laid out, the hearing would be set at the August 19 meeting, held at the first meeting in September, and the law adopted at the second September meeting at the earliest. The hearing is the formal moment to be heard, in person or in writing.

Third, everything in between. The Board of Trustees meets the first and third Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. in the Georgianna Grant Meeting Room at the Stanley Kellerhouse Municipal Building, takes public comment at its regular meetings, and takes written comment at BoardofTrustees@crotononhudson-ny.gov or 1 Van Wyck Street. It was a handful of emails that put pigeons on the agenda in the first place.

As for what to ask: the record itself lists the levers. Grandfathering — Tarrytown's 1998 ban, cited as the model, grandfathered existing owners, while Croton's draft rules it out at Simon's urging; a hearing could ask why. The compliance date — January 1, 2027 is a board choice made for certainty, not a legal requirement, and it can move. And the species lines — hens in; roosters, cockerels, and pigeons out — were drawn in work sessions this spring and can be redrawn the same way.

If the law passes unchanged, every pigeon in the village — including the permitted coop at 148 — must be gone by January 1, indoors included.

Watch the record: April 8 — fowl provisions pulled · May 27 — the disclosure and the consensus · June 16 — the ZBA hearing · June 24 — the health research · July 1 — Local Law 10 introduced