Tustin : Rooster Boosters Win Council Over

An amateur video came to the rescue of the roosters in this city after a Planning Commission ruling threatened to send them scurrying for the border.

The City Council viewed a five-minute homemade video in which the sounds of roosters crowing in Old Town were compared to airplanes flying overhead and listened to the pleas of nearly a dozen residents who want the birds to stay. Then the City Council approved a compromise that saves the roosters, but orders their owners to make their presence a quiet one.

“We can control the times of airplanes (flying overhead), but it is more difficult. . .with animals.,” said Thomas R. Saltarelli, a newcomer to the council. Nonetheless, Saltarelli joined his colleagues in a unanimous vote Monday that allows the fowl to stay.

Under what council members are calling a compromise ruling, rooster owners can keep their birds if their lot size is at least 15,000 square feet, if roosters are kept in a confined area that is more than 100 feet from any dwelling, and if the birds are kept from the sight of neighbors.

The Planning Commission had previously ruled that because of complaints from unnamed Old Town residents, the city should uphold codes that prohibit fowl in residential areas.

Other Old Town residents mounted a sizable campaign in favor of the roosters and last month submitted more than 50 signatures of residents who said the roosters’ crowing does not disturb them.