EAST PROVIDENCE — If the City Council follows form after taking up the matter formally for the first time at its April 19, the ability of residents to legally keep chicken hens will soon be codified.

The council gave the first of two mandatory approvals to an ordinance — Chapter 3, “Animals,” “Sec. 3-4. Residential chicken hens permit” — by a slim 3-2 margin at last week’s gathering.

The bill sponsors Ward 3 Councilor Nate Cahoon and Ward 2’s Anna Sousa were joined in the majority by At-Large member Bob Rodericks. Ward 1 rep and council president Bob Britto along with Ward 4 colleague Ricardo Mourato voted against.

The item is likely to be included for second and final approval, which includes a public hearing, at the body's May 3 meeting.

Key aspects of the proposed ordinance include capping the number of chickens at six, the coop must be at least 20 feet away from a home and five feet from the abutting property line and it also must be “kept clean, dry, and sanitary at all times; manure must be composted in enclosed bins.” No roosters are allowed and the owner of the hens must live on the property.

The matter has been discussed by the council to greater and/or lesser extents for the better part of the last 18 months. It’s been said, for various reasons, the chickens are wanted to be kept to produce eggs and also serve as comfort animals.

Members of the public who had heard the matter may be gaining steam spoke about the issue at the council’s initial meeting of the month on April 5.

Among those to express an opinion was Shirley Cloutier, who is vehemently opposed to the bill. Cloutier’s family has engaged with a neighbor who was keeping chickens despite the former’s protestations.

Cloutier submitted a large packet of research and commentary reflecting the ills of residential flocks, including about recent outbreaks of avian flu in New Hampshire. She also believes it has led to a surge of coyote sightings in her neighborhood.

“I still stand on the premise that having backyard chickens in the city of East Providence is not a good thing,” Cloutier said at the gatherings as well as in both phone conversations and emails outside of the meeting setting. “The way that ordinance is written it says that you have to get permission from your neighbors or it has to be agreed upon by your neighbors. If that passage is just left in the ordinance I will have to except it because it will become law but it doesn’t mean I agree with it.”

The proposed ordinance includes language allowing neighbors to object to the issuance of the permit, which would be issued at the discretion of the zoning officer and the animal control officer.

The latter, Will Muggle of the East Providence Police Department, testified at the April 19 meeting the proposed ordinance as written gave him the necessary tools of enforcement.