Lea Cruz looked on her tablet at the picture of the chicken coop she wanted to buy.

It was not cheap but told the Chronicle it was an investment in her and her husband’s health.

But before spending $4,600, and other associated costs for the coop and its enclosure for the chickens to scratch and feed, the 48-year-old nurse telephoned Inverness’ building department about the rules when it came to chickens and coops.

The answer city government staff gave her was straight forward enough: The city didn’t allow them in residential areas.

Cruz is now looking to change that. As a result of her petition to city officials, the Inverness City Council and its planning and zoning board will consider next month an ordinance to allow the popular fowl at people’s homes. City government staff will recommend the new ordinance be approved.

Most of Cruz’s backyard makes up a well-maintained garden with a greenhouse, citrus tree, raised beds with herbs and vegetables, and a large trellis densely covered in muscadine vines and grapes.

“There are many benefits to having chickens,” Cruz told the Chronicle.

They can provide you with eggs and their manure can be used as fertilizer, she said.

They eat and recycle food waste, she said.

Cruz said she also wanted to know where her chicken eggs came from and knowing the chickens were well treated and healthy is important, she said.

Rearing chickens is not new to Cruz or her husband Vic Febreo, 59, both of whom grew up in rural Philippines.

Febreo grew up on a farm and Cruz’s mother was a stay-at-home mom who bred pigs in her backyard and sold the piglets. Cruz also remembers at least a dozen chickens roaming the property.

“It was basically taking care of a small farm,” Cruz said of her work with the animals.

Cruz is proud of her large backyard garden, how it was designed and built by her husband, the mix of vegetables and herbs, and the produce the two eat.

The goal is to make it as self-sustaining as she can, Cruz said.

Cruz is not alone.

An estimated million families raise backyard chickens, and the number is rising following the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Backyard Poultry, an online industry website that follows and analyzes poultry trends.

Greg Rice, Inverness community development director, told the Chronicle that urban sustainability farming is growing and people are treating the chickens as much like pets as livestock.

He said he has sent a proposed ordinance to the city’s attorney for review. It includes a four-chicken limit, not allowing chicken sales or on-premises slaughter, no free-range chickens, and space requirements per chicken.

He also wants to make sure they don’t make too much noise. The ordinance would not allow roosters.

Rice said that he too will raise backyard chickens if the ordinance is approved.

City Manager Eric Williams said it was time the city allowed chickens in residential communities, given their popularity. And it was important that the city had an ordinance to try and protect everyone’s property rights.

He said an ordinance would also allow people who already own chickens to be open about it.

“But there has to be limits,” he said.

Cruz thinks the issue involves more than only chickens.

She said people have gotten away from growing their own food and have sacrificed their health and nutrition for the convenience of prepackaged meals.

“Raising chickens and growing vegetable; we’ve lost that somewhere along the way,” Cruz said.

Fred Hiers is a reporter at the Citrus Chronicle. Email him at fred.hiers@chronicleonline.com.

It was the kind of phone call Inverness City Manager Eric Williams was hoping he wouldn’t get.

Nearly a year ago Williams and his staff applied for two federal grants to pave the dirt roads that crisscross Inverness Acres and Inverness Village and provide utilities. The roads are so deteriorated that school buses, emergency vehicles, and mail delivery vehicles will not drive down many of them.

The city council in June 2021 agreed with Williams to apply for the grants totaling $32 million and hired North Carolina-based Kimley-Horn and Associates as its consultants.

Williams told the Chronicle that the consultants contacted him late Thursday to say that Inverness was not selected.

It was a letdown for Williams after submitting detailed applications asking for help and a share of the Community Development Block Grant Mitigation fund.

Williams told the Chronicle there were 247 applicants and only 17 awards. He said a letter from the grant program would likely be forthcoming.

“We’re going to keep looking at options,” Williams said. “We’re going back to the drawing board.”

The county spent $30,000 to pay for the consultants and apply for the grants for the two areas north and south of State Road 44.

The deterioration of the roads were so severe last year that the council approved spending several thousand dollars for emergency repairs.

The subdivisions and their dirt roads have been a dilemma for the city for years.

The problem is the plats for the two subdivisions were accepted by the county half a century ago. Later, the county presented the plats to Inverness. The subdivisions are inside the city limits.

But part of the city’s plat acceptance was that the city would not be responsible for the subdivisions’ roads.

The vast majority of the combined 2,051 lots are still owned by Miami-based Inverness Properties Corporation, which has made no moves to pave the roads.

While the city is not obligated to pave the roads, Williams said there are problems leaving them as they exist.

“Though the city specifically did not accept (the roads in the plat), we are faced with conditions today that are an obstacle to smart growth, economic development, and readiness for certain disasters such as a hurricane,” Williams wrote his council bosses in 2021.

Also in city business, Williams set aside $350,000 for construction and permitting costs for the proposed Wallace Brooks Park beach.

Williams told the Chronicle he could not be more specific about costs, given that Inverness staff and consultants were in the middle of design and permitting. The size and layout of the beach were also still being determined.

Originally wanting to build the beach at Liberty Park, city staff earlier this year found in their files a 60-year-old, long forgotten record of a public dedication by Florida officials of submerged lands of Lake Henderson to the city at Wallace Brooks Park and for the city to develop. That record led the city now to build the park at Wallace Brooks given that the city owns a strip of land along the water’s edge and into the lake.

But Williams told the Chronicle Friday the city still needed to get permits from both the Southwest Florida Water Management District, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Inverness City County approved this week $71,000 for the first half of a State Road 44 corridor study meant to help guide city officials with their development along the much used thoroughfare.

City Manager Eric Williams told the council that given the traffic on State Road 44, the widening of U.S. 41 North, the HCA Florida Citrus Hospital campus off S.R. 44, and a high school with school buses picking up and dropping off students, “it’s time to do a study.”

Community Development Director Greg Rice told the council during its regularly scheduled meeting this week that the corridor study will focus on the safety of State Road 44, existing and potentially future pedestrian crossings, school bus routes and drop off points, access to HCA Florida Citrus Hospital’s campus and potential development there and other areas along the highway.

Rice said that city development staff and hospital leadership will work closely when it comes to planning and participating in the study because of the hospital campus. That will include reviewing roads leading to the hospital campus and determining if some should be made into one-way streets.

Rice said the study will also review Tompkins Street, which runs parallel to S.R. 44 and reevaluate its land use and zoning.

The study will also include a broad overview of the corridor and look at beautifying and better landscaping along the corridor.

Rice told the council that city staff met with Michael Baker International and selected the Pittsburgh-based consultant company to do the work. The company specializes in engineering, development, and design work and has offices throughout the country and several in Florida.

Williams told the council that the price of the study would exceed the $100,000 the city budgeted for the project. So Williams asked to divide the project’s cost over two years.

Councilwoman Linda Bega asked Williams how much more the city will have to approve and pay for the study’s second half. Williams replied about another $70,000.

Council president Cabot McBride said there is nothing surprising in the proposed study and the corridor issues to be investigated by Michael Baker International are all things the county has discussed before and agreed needed more in depth review.

“This is something to get really excited about,” he said. “I see good things happening here.”

An Inverness man was taken into custody on accusations he struck a pedestrian with a vehicle in his hometown before driving away.

Citrus County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested 52-year-old Carl Michael Baker the afternoon of Sunday, June 5, on a charge of leaving a crash scene involving serious injuries.

According to his arrest report, Baker was jailed after authorities found damage to and blood on his blue Chrysler 200, tying the car to the Friday, June 3, hit-and-run of a man who was walking in the 300 block of Washington Avenue in Inverness.

Deputies arrived to the crash scene to find the man lying in the grass and bleeding from his head on the east side of the roadway.

According to Baker’s arrest report, the man’s false teeth were on the ground roughly 10 feet away from him, and “he was also knocked out of his shoes.”

“The pedestrian was unresponsive at the time,” Baker’s arrest report states, “but became alert while on scene.”

First responders determined the man suffered traumatic injuries, and airlifted him to HCA Florida Ocala Hospital for treatment in the intensive care unit of three broken ribs, a fractured neck, and bleeding on the brain.

Investigators at the crash scene learned the suspect vehicle was northbound on Washington Avenue, approaching East Gulf-to-Lake Highway, when it struck the man.

“There were multiple car parts laying in the roadway by the pedestrian,” Baker’s arrest report states.

Deputies discovered a blue side mirror belonging to a 2015-17 model Chrysler 200, which authorities later found Saturday parked in Baker’s driveway off of Highway 44 East with its passenger-side mirror missing and its front windshield cracked.

There was also a dent in the car next to what appeared to be blood. Authorities also noticed the front-right side of its bug reflector was broken, matching with the pieces deputies recovered from the crash scene.

Deputies seized the Chrysler as evidence, and found it was registered to Baker, who, according to his arrest report, contacted the sheriff’s office Sunday to report his car wasn’t in his driveway.

When a deputy told him his vehicle was involved in a crash, Baker said someone threw something at his vehicle on Washington Avenue.

Baker, his arrest report shows, told the deputy he was driving home Friday, traveling north on Washington Avenue, when he saw a man standing on the roadside.

When he passed the man, he said, Baker heard a loud strike on his vehicle, and assumed someone threw something at him.

“He also stated that the subject looked big, and he was scared so he didn’t turn around,” Baker’s arrest report states. “After the defendant got home, he stated he looked at the damage but did not contact the sheriff’s office to report that a traffic crash had occurred.”

Baker also knew sheriff’s office personnel was at his home on Saturday but still didn’t contact the law enforcement agency until Sunday.

Authorities booked Baker at the Citrus County Detention Facility under a $15,000 bond, which a judge left unchanged during Baker’s first court appearance on Monday. June 22 was also scheduled as Baker’s arraignment.

Contact Chronicle reporter Buster Thompson at 352-564-2916, bthompson@chronicleonline.com or visit tinyurl.com/yxn2ahso to see more of his stories.

Citrus County commissioners are hoping to stop a growing phenomenon occurring on vacant land in residential neighborhoods.

Commissioners learned details Tuesday of three code violators — people living in sheds or RVs on property they own and intend to build a home, but don’t yet have building permits.

The cases involve multiple people sharing a single portable generator on vacant lots in neighborhoods in northwest Citrus County.

Commissioner Jeff Kinnard said there’s a difference between owners wanting to live on their property while overseeing construction of a house, and the problem he’s seeing and hearing from residents.

“They’re using it as a campsite,” Kinnard said. “Do we want to allow this to continue?”

It’s against county ordinance to place a non-accessory structure — shed, trailer, RV, boat trailer — on a vacant lot.

Complaints to code compliance are on the rise: 61 so far this calendar year after having 81 in all of 2020, according to Tuesday’s workshop presentation. This time last year, the county logged 38 complaints.

“This is becoming more of an issue and more of a challenge,” County Administrator Randy Oliver said.

While all three cases cited during the workshop are in the tail end of the code compliance process, where a special master has either given a timeline for compliance or already levied fines, commissioners said the process is too complicated and time consuming.

“They can drag it out and drag it out and drag it out,” Commissioner Holly Davis said. “I have a problem with, ‘ask forgiveness, not permission.’”

Oliver said the policy is difficult to enforce. After much discussion, the board reached three conclusions:

• No RVs, sheds or any other non-accessory structure on a vacant lot unless the owner has a building permit for a new house.

• Securing a building permit will allow the property owner a single RV on-site while the house is being built. At board Chairman Scott Carnahan’s suggestion, the RV would need to be hooked into the well/septic or central water/sewer that the initial building permit requires. Under the proposal, the county would no longer allow anyone living on vacant property to reside in anything other than an RV.

• The RV can stay on the property after the owners move into their newly built home. Commissioner Ron Kitchen Jr. noted that a property owner would likely lose a homestead exemption if they rented out the RV.

“The last thing we want is a house with a stack of RVs behind it,” he said.

Oliver said the homestead issue would probably require an opinion from the county attorney’s office.

Wes Antill, who lives in one of the affected neighborhoods, implored commissioners to be consistent.

“Folks like me ... go by the books,” he said. “These folks don’t have a vested interest like we do.”