Urban Agriculture and Firearm Assembly at Town Council Work Session

“It has been an administrative nightmare.”

Planning Director Lauren Kopishke spoke frankly to the town council on May 4, emphasizing the need for greater clarity and robust performance standards in the Town code related to urban agriculture. According to Kopishke, the code is currently convoluted and in some cases contradictory, creating situations where the staff does not have the support needed to enforce human and animal welfare. The basic assumption is that animals kept under a trampoline or in a bathtub, scenarios that staff witnessed, are not being kept according to standards that are sanitary for the humans involved and certainly not fulfilling for the animals.

The Town Council met on May 4 for a work session. Royal Examiner Photo Credits: Brenden McHugh

Those are extreme examples. But for staff, the question across the board has been: when is agricultural use incidental to primary residential use, and when has it ceased to be incidental? A recent case in which a residentially zoned lot was found to be the site of upwards of forty goats put that question on the fast track.

Planning Director Lauren Kopishke talks to the council about a short-term rental, regulations for proposed firearm assembly in the C-1 district, and a new, three-tiered system proposed for urban agriculture.

Kopishke presented a new model to the council, limiting urban agriculture to bee hives, chickens, and rabbits, while establishing a tiered system in which, when thresholds are crossed in terms of lot size, greater allowances are made for how many of each can be had. Attendant concerns include housing and run space. In the largest lot size bracket, the proposed ordinance would permit one rooster per ten hens, an innovation, as roosters are not currently allowed in Town limits. The ordinance would also allow slaughtering within Town limits, so long as it is done indoors. All the guidelines have been crafted in concert with expert opinion, such as the Virginia Cooperative Extension office.

Urban agriculture has sometimes been a contentious issue for the Town Council. Vice-Mayor Amber Veitenthal has always been a libertarian voice on the council, urging property rights and showing skepticism of regulations that may potentially hinder what owners should rightfully be allowed to do in the privacy of their own yards. Some council members have followed her lead and others have not, although a majority that developed over conversations in late 2023 led to a rejection of one attempt to regulate urban agriculture. On the evening of May 4, there was relatively little discussion of this matter, with members seeking minor points of clarity from Kopishke. If any strong opposition to the proposed ordinance involving the three-tiered model exists, it was not expressed at the work session.

Also considered at the work session was a zoning text amendment for the C-1 district that would allow the assembly of firearms in a retail establishment, by right, where such assembly accounts for less than 35% of the retail space. Crossing that threshold, the business concern would qualify as firearms manufacturing, which would require a special-use permit. Currently, firearms assembly on either of these levels is only allowed in a zone with an industrial designation. “The bleeding of industrial into commercial” was a description coined by Councilwoman Melissa DeDomenico-Payne to reflect Councilman Bruce Rappaport in expressing his concern. Although the phrase did not necessarily express her own views on the matter, it captured Rappaport’s overall concern, which she grasped, about setting a precedent.

The applicant driving this amendment would not be engaged in the intense kind of manufacturing that would involve the melting and molding of steel, but would rather be assembling parts that have already been made. However, per Rappaport’s point, could the amendment open a door to that kind of intense use entering the C-1 district? Veitenthal emphasized that any such intense use would be governed by the SUP process, in which case the council would have the opportunity to review it. Furthermore, in her mind, this application is an opportunity to develop a segment of Front Royal commercial zoning, adjacent to the UPS store, that is greatly in need of development, taking a vacant shop and making it the site for something economically robust. In the interest of good zoning practice, Rappaport, who has an extensive background in firearms himself, stuck to his point, while Councilman Joshua Ingram, a marksman, joined the vice-mayor in the view that allowing assembly in the C-1 would be a net win.

Other items dispatched quickly that night were a write-off for bad debt, a bid award for the delivery of ready-mix concrete, a yearly re-adoption “by reference” of state vehicular laws, and a removal of the codification of an agreement pertaining to rates, charges, and fees for out-of-town water and septic service rendered to commercial users in the corridor.

Having conducted a closed meeting prior to the open meeting and having no other business to attend to, the mayor adjourned the meeting.

Watch the Front Royal Town Council Work Session of May 4, 2026