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GREENSBORO - Chicken lovers are in cluck.

The Greensboro City Council voted to loosen the rules and allow chickens and bees on small residential lots.

The unanimous vote also will provide a little peace for neighbors of the urban farmers. The new ordinance bans noisy adult roosters and limits the number of chickens and bee colonies on any one lot.

Also Tuesday night, the council voted to extend the hours that sidewalk cafes can stay open - 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. The new rules will allow the cafes to open four hours earlier in the morning and stay open an hour later in the evening.

Chicken owner and Lindley Park resident Brian Talbert worked with city staff to amend the poultry and beekeeping ordinance after he learned that his lot did not meet the city's 50-foot setback requirements.

Talbert's backyard coop became a problem after his rooster, Elvis, rattled neighbor Sherry O'Neal with a 4:15 a.m. wakeup call.

On Tuesday night, Greensboro's chicken owners said they keep the poultry for the eggs, but they consider them pets.

Billy Jones, who spoke on behalf of the amendment, has four hens and one rooster named Gus. He said his neighbors enjoy the eggs, but he promised that if the rooster bugged them, he would take care of it.

"I promised them, if we did have a problem with the rooster, I would fry it," Jones said.

O'Neal, who spoke against the amendment, said she was concerned about the noise and the farm smells in her neighborhood, where the lots are small and residences are close together.

Under the newly amended ordinance, residents can keep bees and chickens on lots as small as 7,000 square feet, as long as they are housed at least 50 feet from any neighboring homes. The new rules also limit urban farmers to one bee colony per 2,000 square feet and one hen per 3,000 square feet of property for lots that don't meet the setback requirement.

"I think that is a reasonable request, particularly if we limit the number of hives," Talbert said. "We limit the number of hens."

The City Council requested that city staff give some consideration for roosters that already live in neighborhoods but will soon be banned.

"We don't want to get Gus fried," Councilwoman T. Dianne Bellamy-Small said.

Also Tuesday night, the council voted 7-2 to change the operating hours for sidewalk cafes. Council members Bellamy-Small and Goldie Wells voted against the measure.

The issue, raised by club and bar owner Rocco Scarfone, prompted conversations about downtown safety. Council members plan to have a September work session to discuss crowd control and public safety issues in the center city.

In other business, the Greensboro Neighborhood Congress asked the City Council to adopt guidelines for the distribution of public records.

The congress, a nonprofit consortium of neighborhood groups, asked the council to appoint a records ombudsman, set timelines for how long the city can take to respond to record requests, and provide for a hearing before the council if the city cannot produce records within 75 days.

Congress co-chairwoman Kathleen Sullivan said a new policy will go a long way to improve the speed, transparency and uniformity of the city's response to requests for public records.

Council members asked City Attorney Terry Wood to review the recommendations and provide them with a report about the city's current public records policies.

"I like it," Mayor Yvonne Johnson said of the group's proposal. "Thank you so much for giving it some thought."

Contact Amanda Lehmert at 373-7075 or amanda.lehmert@news-record.com