Here's the report from last night's meeting of the Spokane Valley City Council regarding keeping backyard chickens:
Tonight the City of Spokane Valley unamously passed a Motion to Approve the raising of chickens by the residents of City of Spokane Valley! In a nutshell, this means that City of Spokane Valley residents can keep one hen per 2,000 sf up to a max of 25 hens, no roosters, and the coop has to be at least 25ft from a neighboring residence. There was only one change to the original Motion to approve, and that was, instead of saying "chickens to be rendered incapable of flight", it was revised to say "chickens to be contained within the subject property". Hopefully, the passage of this new ordinance to allow the raising of chickens in the City of Spokane Valley will assist with the passing of a similar ordinance for Spokane County.
Way to go Spokane Valley. You now have the best chicken ordinances in the Inland Northwest. The County Commissioners were supposed to bring this up last night at their meeting but I missed it. If anyone attended or saw the meeting last night, let me know what was discussed.
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they should include what to do with the chicken litter when it is dirty. Believe most resistance to backyard chickens has been due to the summer smell of accumulated chicken droppings in the Winter and carried over to hot summer days. Ordinance should say anyone who doesn't keep a well manicured lawn can't have chickens as folks who can't find time to mow their lawn are usually the ones who don't clean up well and could spoil it for everyone else. An opinion.
Posted by: Gary M Angell | March 23, 2011 at 10:35 PM
bock bock!
Posted by: | March 24, 2011 at 05:55 AM
That's such a good point Gary. There definitely needs to be an awareness of how the chickens affect everyone else. Like you said, we don't want to do anything to make people think this ordinance is a bad idea! A couple weeks ago in the Valley Voice a woman wrote in complaining about neighbors who seemed to be oblivious at how the noise affected the neighborhood- she was really angry. And it made me sad because it puts a damper on all of us who really want this allowance. We chicken owners/lovers need to work on our reputation in the community. We love our neighbors just as much as we love our chickens :)
Posted by: nancy goodwin | March 24, 2011 at 09:43 AM