Legal Issues

My city denied my application dor a coop permit claiming that the only hens they allow are chickens. Now I have to jump through several hoops to appeal this.
I already wrote one council member who grew up on a farm to see what his take is on this. Any advice?

what will they do if you get ducks without permission?

No idea

well..., did the permits ever mention them not allowing ducks?

Did you check to see if your city/county posts their zoning codes online? Where I live, it's a county thing. If you can find the code that defines what is legal for fowl, you might find that it doesn't agree with what they told you. This is from my county, as an example: http://www.clackamas.us/planning/zdo.html (under "livestock").

If it turns out the code specifically says chickens-only, then I think you're probably screwed. If it's like my county and has a grey area with something like "any fowl known for its loud call are prohibited", the person who denied your application might think ducks are in that category, which I think is an argument you can win.

Our city did not address chickens and ducks in the small animal code so we did what everyone else did, we followed the county code. Our city had adopted the county code almost word for word but they left out the line from the county code that specified 1 per square foot of living space, which I assume refers to the coop size and not the pen because that would be severely overcrowded. The code did keep the wording for birds which specified more space for bigger birds and less space for smaller birds but there was no limit on any type of bird.

So, because our code enforcement officer is an incompetent bully, he tried telling people that chickens are limited to three like non-bird dogs and cats rather than being considered birds. We went to court and we won. In the meantime we asked our city council to add chickens to the code for clarification.

What happened next is that the code enforcement officer got on the planning committee and took it upon himself to (poorly) rewrite the entire codes after having the original code repealed. He decided on a limit of 4 but city council raised it to 5 since the code now allows 5 dogs and cats total rather than just 3 outside dogs and cats and unlimited indoor dogs and cats. Now the bully code enforcement officer is trying to make everyone get rid of all their birds in excess of 5 when those birds were legal prior to the code rewrite and therefore grandfathered in. He also decided he should ban roosters because he wants our small town to urbanize and be more restrictive than Seattle, which allows 8 chickens without regard to yard size. Our city generously permits rich people with larger estate properties to have more chickens because rich people deserve to have more than poor people.

We already won one legal battle and now we will have to fight for our rights again. We did nothing wrong other than to buy a home where corrupt city officials want to be bullies. Of course none of them even live in our small town so they don't have to follow the rules they create for actual taxpaying residents.

The grandfather clause protects people from the government "taking" their property by changing the rules but our code enforcement officer does not even follow the rules when we have a judgement in our favor. He thinks he can do whatever he wants to feed his inferiority complex by being a bully.

A while ago when we lived in a town up north, I was good friends with zoning. He said no farm animals, it had chickens in there. We had three lots with our home, so me the way I am, built a huge pen and raised 100 pheasants. Lol every complained, but there was nothing the city could do.

We had a similar ordeal when we lived up north. We became so completely fed up with the local government micromanaging of our COUNTY property that we sold our business, sold our houses, and moved to a state where people can still exercise some common sense.

No regrets.

in my town chickens are now allowed, ( i don't know the details because our birds live at our country house) and before they were legal a bunch of people had them, i don't think anybody really got in trouble unless their neighbors complained

As part of my appeal, I plan on showing that the sanitation levels are the same. Does anyone have any good links?