Clyde Hill needs signatures from Clyde Hill residents only to consider the petition.  Even if you signed the other petition, please sign here if you are a Clyde Hill resident.

Thank you!

Dear Clyde Hill City Planning Commission and City Council Members,

We would like to ask you consider allowing hens (no roosters) and other quiet fowl in Clyde Hill, with certain limitations and restrictions. As you learned from the recent council meeting, there are families in Clyde Hill who have been responsibly raising fowl in Clyde Hill for decades, with neighborhood support and no complaints. At the current time, Clyde Hill is the only city in the area to ban fowl. They are allowed, within variable though often strict limits, in Medina, Yarrow Point, Hunts Point, Mercer Island, Bellevue, Kirkland, Seattle and Redmond. With the current drive towards sustainable living, local food sourcing, responsible eating and organic gardening, Clyde Hill should show itself to be supportive of these popular, sustainable and healthy trends. We would like to recommend that Clyde Hill draft or adopt another city’s restrictions on keeping fowl. Bellevue limits the number to 6, and has fairly strict requirements for coops, fencing, and so forth. Yarrow Point has a clause for nuisance animals, which allows them to handle complaints on a case by case basis, including allowing them to deal with families who do not comply with restrictions or properly care for their animals. A nuisance clause could very easily eliminate a problem like the recently publicized one in Clyde Hill. If you would like to learn more about responsible suburban and urban hen raising, you could take a coop tour this summer. From this you could see that chickens can be raised in a way that is sustainable, quiet, clean and a benefit to the land. There are several tours in the area, and sometimes included in the tour is a gorgeous coop and flock of chickens at one of the prime residences in Yarrow Point. You will see that chickens, in smaller flocks with no roosters, are cleaner than dogs and cats, less of a threat to noise levels and public safety than dogs, cars, motorcycles and boats, and that they provide valuable lessons to our children and a healthy food source that is sourced without the drastic, unimaginable, yet sanctioned animal cruelty that is part of the production of commercial eggs. Sincerely, Clyde Hill residents