BREMERTON — Weed whacker broken? No? OK, is your weed whacker fine, but you wish it was a goat? Good news: The Bremerton City Council is looking to amend the city charter to allow goats for vegetation control.

The city council is expected to amend Ordinance No. 5283 (prohibited animals) at its Sept. 2 meeting. It will allow residents to use goats to eat away unwanted weeds or bushes, so long as they’re not in the same place for more than 15 days.

The idea was first proposed in January by Councilman Jerry McDonald after a rat chewed through some wiring in his neighbor’s car. It seems a nearby demolition had pushed rats into blackberry bushes near the downtown condominium where he lives.

McDonald hopes goats can eat away the bushes that rats like to live in.

“There’s a lot of people that employ goats and basically they’re another tool for the tool kit,” McDonald said.

Using goats is also an environmentally friendly alternative to pesticides, McDonald said.

According the amendment, goats must be tethered, fenced or supervised at all times. “Supervised” is a vague term, to include people or watchdogs.

Permits won’t be required — for goats or goat owners.

“We don’t want to get into the licensing of shepherds,” quipped Councilman Dino Davis at a recent council study session.

Instead, goats will be monitored by code enforcement.

“On this particular issue, we did not require a permit for this,” said Roger Lubovich, city attorney. “We weren’t going to go through that administrative process of permitting the locations of these locations.”

The amendment also cleans up some flawed language in the ordinance.

It allows the use of goats for unlicensed activities or brief, one-time purposes, provided they don’t exceed five days and follow proper safety measures and are approved by the city.

And it allows certain organizations and activities, such as wildlife rehabilitation centers, circuses, zoos, festivals and parades, to use otherwise prohibited animals. Meaning that, technically, livestock used in past parades were in the city illegally.

The code will also be changed to allow residents to keep bees, which had been banned by a catchall clause that prohibited venomous, poisonous or wild animals.

“We want to encourage people to keep bees,” Davis said. “Especially in urban areas because they thrive.”

The council will vote on the issue at its next meeting Sept. 2 at the Norm Dicks Building in Bremerton.