Tulsa animal ordinance rewrite slights public input

Tonight's 17 pages of footnoted submissions to the commission, with excerpts carefully chosen to share from during my five minutes at the microphone were suddenly of no use. The highlighted sections, in a hopeful yellow, mocked me and all the time I'd spent in research, compiling, and editing for the last few months. I fumbled through my pages looking for something, anything, that I could now say to the members of the Tulsa Animal Welfare commission, that would make any difference at all. And there was nothing.

In that moment I felt so many things. Betrayal - was my city really this disinterested in solving the food desert issue that sends so many of its children to bed at night with hunger pangs? Confusion - after months of researching best practices, and what other municipalities have allowed, even encouraged - information that this commission had specifically told me it wanted - why were they no longer interested? Or had they ever been?

It dawned on me right then, standing there, that I'd been lied to and manipulated. Then came the disappointment. In the commission, to be sure, but mostly in myself. Were those whom I represented (roughly 4,000 Tulsans who already raise chickens on their city lots) going to be sorry they had trusted me to speak for them? Had I wasted their time and gotten their hopes up, that things could change, for nothing? But above all, I experienced the single worst thing that a person standing at a public microphone can - speechlessness.

Let me take you back to what brought me to this terrible moment in time. Long before I was aware of the commission I stood before, the City of Tulsa set in motion a series of fifty Authorities, Boards, and Commissions, to create, "thoughtful advice to create policies and develop programs."

The particular commission I'd been dealing with for half of 2019 was the Animal Welfare Commission. It had been tasked in updating the current Tulsa ordinances pertaining mostly to the nuisance and dangerous animal laws, the community cat issue, animals being allowed to leave the shelter unaltered, and pet licensing / registration. But what I found out in June of 2019 was that the sections being rewritten included a subject of particular interest to me - urban farming, and in particular, backyard poultry. How many times is the city liable to open up their laws for reconsideration, in a way that would allow more people to grow more food for their families on their own property or in community gardens, I asked myself? I assumed not many, and began attending the commission's monthly meetings in July, to advocate for an innovative way to look at the poultry laws which could address many of the serious issues Tulsa currently faces.

(Here are the existing ordinances and the proposed changes.) [Those links are to local copies, for the sake of permanence. Here are links to the current animal ordinance (Title 2) on Municode and to the June 26, 2019, draft of the animal ordinance on the city's website.]

Just a quick note about me - I'm just a normal person. I've lived in the Tulsa area since 1997 and own a little home near 31st and Sheridan, which we bought in 2000. I raised two sons here and have a young grandson. I've never run for office. I've never written a political blog, or an article about chickens, or been a community organizer nor avid protester for or against any causes. I do, however, have strong beliefs about government, namely, that it's the government's basic job to keep us safe from dangers foreign and domestic, and very little else. Fundamentally, the government is there to protect my rights to do normal things on the property that I own. It's there to serve me and my family, and not get in the way of us providing for ourselves. Both the current and proposed Tulsa animal welfare ordinances as they pertain to backyard poultry are generally antiquated, in places unscientific, stifling to ingenuity in solving the City's problems with resources that are already in place, financially burdensome (overly nit-picky), and in many ways just plain out of the norm in modern America.

"At the City of Tulsa, we've made continuous improvement a part of our culture. On any given area, we are always asking ourselves: 'How can we be better serving the citizens of Tulsa?'", Mayor G.T. Bynum said in the announcement of his plan, on the cityoftulsa.org website.

Somehow, I thought this meant me, as a homeowner and twenty-year resident. Somehow, a lot of other citizens thought it meant them, too. There are more than four thousand distinct members of several online communities in Tulsa, that these laws affect, aside from the cat-, dog-, and native species-interests addressed at the commission's monthly meetings. These groups are represented on Facebook and MeWe, committed to sharing environmentally-conscious, healthy ways for people to feed their families on their own private property, even if all that consists of is an average little city lot. Since having joined these groups, I personally have planted on my little slice of Tulsa: 7 dwarf fruit trees, 3 grapevines, roughly 35 berry bushes of all sorts, dozens of strawberry plants, spring, summer, and fall vegetable gardens, have kept beehives, planted hundreds of beneficial native plants to welcome pollinators, and yes, have raised chickens since 2014. These online communities have encouraged me to try things I hadn't previously considered, and taught me to do so more efficiently, economically, and sustainably. Among the groups I'd been unofficially representing at the TAW meetings were Urban Farming Guild of Tulsa, Tulsa Backyard Chickens, and Oklahoma Homesteading and Preservation.

So the commission created a draft version of the proposed ordinance changes and has held monthly meetings open to the public ever since. Members of the community attend, and have been given public comment time at the end of each meeting, and have made full use of it to weigh in with their best solutions, or why the commission or the other organizations present have gotten it all wrong, and what they would propose instead. Disagreement with the commission and with other members of the community has been heated but civil, on all sorts of topics.

Since most of the time during these meetings has gone toward changing the groupings of the rabies ordinances (which were spread through three different sections of both the existing and newly proposed version of the law, in the most disorganized fashion), the needs of native species such as protected owls and endangered birds (represented by the Audubon Society and other local protection groups) weighed against the non-native feral cats' needs (represented by local rescue groups, community cat advocates, TNR proponents and more), addressing dangerous pets at large, and which agency will respond to neglected pets or nuisance animal or unhealthy conditions reports (there seem to be at least four agencies who think this is their job and there is still no delineation of which will respond to what calls nor who has authority to take real action), and what official actions to take about the rampant feral cat colonies... So there was never any sense in hundreds or even thousands of the chicken owners to attend en masse in the small meeting rooms provided, when a few of us could easily report back to the rest which of our issues were being discussed and how we'd like to respond.

Each month, from July 2019 onward, I specifically asked the commission, during the public comment period, for a dedicated meeting where chicken owners could come and dispel the myths that the commission stubbornly continued to believe in, during which we could educate them about the kinds of community problems that our efforts could begin to solve if the laws were re-written with those measures in mind. Each month, our requests were denied. Or rather, not addressed. In fact when the public online survey concerning the changes to the law closed in August and the statistics were presented in September, there was no mention of any of the chicken respondents in the minutes or in the infographic presented - only dog and cat issues. Because I know at least a dozen of us, people I know personally, responded to the poultry sections of the survey, with lengthy comments, trying to inform the commission as to why much of the wording needed to be fixed while it was being rewritten anyway, I began to think that we poultry owners weren't even being listened to. We literally weren't on the commission's radar despite participating in the process of aiding them as invited to do.

Infographic for City of Tulsa July-August 2019 Animal Ordinance Survey. Click here for link to the original PDF.

So the backyard poultry owners began submitting our concerns in writing, before or during each general meeting, hoping to begin correcting the commission's misconceptions (and frequent outright ignorance) about keeping chickens in the city. Each month I took advantage of my five allotted minutes to introduce the topics in that month's submission, confident that what we had presented the commission had been well worth our time in preparation, and the commission's time for consideration, before presenting their eventual recommendations to the City Council for a vote.

We tried to show the commission how some of the current ordinances weren't even aligned with basic facts or science, especially concerning the proper age at which to butcher various breeds of young chicks for meat, thinking that if the commission didn't recognize the problems with the wording themselves, that they would want to be told, so they could fix it, even if no actual policy changes resulted.

We tried to show them inconsistencies between how pigeon owners and chicken owners in this city are treated under the current wording of the law. Citizens can own 200 racing / homing pigeons in Tulsa, while poultry owners wanting to feed their families fresh eggs, are currently allowed only 6 hens (proposed, 8) and 14 young meat birds, with extensive stipulations on how they must be maintained, and what their enclosures are required to be constructed from. 200 pigeons as pets somehow seemed normal to the commission, but a few dozen chickens for the purpose of feeding one's family was just too much for us to ask of them.

And if not explicitly prohibiting free-ranging (allowing one's chickens to scratch in the grass and eat bugs and sun themselves outside their coops, but still on the owner's property), then the current wording of the ordinances at least discourages this healthy and necessary practice, requiring them to be "kept in a building...". Whether intentional or not, the proposed changes appear to allow for free-ranging, but not clearly enough that anyone knows what the intended limits are. The unnecessarily restrictive placement of the chickens' coops in the current laws (50 feet from an adjoining residence) is not in the best interest of the birds' health and welfare, but is worded at the sole convenience of the nearest neighbors, even in the proposed draft (40 feet from an adjacent residence). In our research, many cities only require between three and twenty feet's distance from the nearest neighbor's property line making following these measurements outright impossible for many residents with small or irregularly shaped allotments. And "property line" wording should be key here, as the health department has cited current chicken owners even when a coop is far enough from the neighbor's residence itself, but not far enough from sheds and other out-buildings. This is lazy wording that is easy to fix and shouldn't be controversial.

We tried to show them why the proposed new rooster registry equates to a pre-signed warrant for animal control and the police to come onto our property if anyone ever files a noise or smell complaint (with no burden of proof that the accused owner's flock is the source of the nuisance), and the many reasons why all citizens should be averse to that idea (the Fourth Amendment, anyone?). We tried to explain how poorly worded some of the commission's proposals are, and what the unintended consequences will inevitably be and how it could open the city up to legitimate lawsuits if implemented as written. One of our researchers on this project with me has actually decided, based on this rooster registry and the direction the commission is heading in general, that she's going to sell her property in Tulsa and move outside city limits because it's become too difficult to both follow the city's requirements and still feed her family economically. We, the people attempting to help this city solve its food insecurity problems are ourselves disincentivized to stay and contribute our knowledge and skills, due to the increasing invasiveness of the government into how we care for the flocks that help feed our own families. The very commission making it more difficult to sustain and protect our own flocks naturally (with roosters), is entirely unencumbered with the requisite experience in these varied fields to make suggestions, much less re-write ordinances, in ways that are not laughable, and they seem to be the only ones who aren't in on the joke. They simply don't know how much they don't know and have proven themselves to be unwilling to take advice from those who do.

We also tried to assure the commission that many of their concerns about chickens in general, and roosters in particular, are already adequately addressed in other existing laws, such as noise and smell ordinances, pets or otherwise (Title 24 Nuisances Section 103-F and Section 101 6-D), general animal maintenance (Title 24 Nuisances Section 101-17), and cockfighting (existing Oklahoma State laws). Why not minimize the lengthy sections on chickens and pigeons, or remove them altogether, to allow the existing ordinances to work for these pets as they do for cats and dogs? Why not simplify the ordinances instead of making them ever more wordy and difficult to interpret, not to mention comply with?

Many times during these meetings, the commission would finalize the wording on various ordinances they'd been working on only to be informed by invited attorneys that their new achievements were superseded by State laws or contradicted or covered by other existing ordinances. So much time wasted when they weren't even aware that there were adequate existing laws (and definitions) not being enforced. How does a commission of this sort get more than a year into the process of crafting the city's new definitions before it finds out there are already legal definitions of leashes and leads, restraints and permitted confinement areas if a dog is chained... in existence? I guess the same way a group of people who know nothing about urban backyard chickens feels qualified, to make recommendations to the City Council on that topic as well.

We presented facts on how other cities have encouraged citizens to raise far more chickens to feed neighbors in times of emergency, or to address hunger, and why many major metropolitan areas have no laws preventing an unlimited number of chickens on personal property, so as to help solve food-insecurity issues in vulnerable pockets of their cities. Austin, TX has a pilot program that even reimburses the initial expenses of owning backyard chickens for those willing to get involved. We're not even proposing any public money be spent, but that we be allowed to pursue the same objectives at our own personal expense, to the same ends - eliminating food deserts in our city. Some of the largest cities in America have no cap whatsoever on how many chickens property owners can keep because those cities know that that is how at-risk people feed themselves, if given the freedom to do so. Tulsa's laws are, by comparison, backwards and counter-productive if we want to solve food insecurity.

We ran the numbers on how many chickens it would actually take to feed an average family of four on eggs and/or meat, year-round, and showed how we came to those totals. Still, the Planning department was invited by the commission to come tell us that the average number of hens many cities allow is 6. I challenged them on this, because they only sampled from cities which are already heavily centrally-planned, not the ones who have been innovative when it comes to feeding the poor and preserving citizens' rights. A guest speaker, Theresa Turner, a biologist who also owns chickens in Tulsa, corrected the planners that it takes far more than six or eight chickens to lay enough eggs for an average family.

We showed the commission how having a large, healthy flock of chickens cuts down on the pest population (and prevents the need to spray harmful chemicals), from mice to rats, to flies and other insects that could otherwise plague plantings nearby. Far from polluting our city with droppings (like dogs, cats, and pigeons do), poultry waste, when composted on-site, renews the soil, and creates healthy lawns and gardens safely and sustainably.

We explained how the tragedy of food waste (1/3 of all groceries bought in America go into the trash instead of being eaten) can be remedied, by feeding stale bread or too-soft fruit to chickens, who then create a safe fertilizer for us to grow more produce on our land. We argued that producing our own fertilizer on-site prevents us having to truck in artificial products from other states, and why that matters to the environment and our local economy.

We advocated for the welfare of our birds to be taken into consideration, since an aging flock lays less eggs, and owners would go years at a time without any eggs, if their six or eight hens were allowed to live their older years out. An older bird's meat is of little to no use, and many of us don't euthanize our pet chickens just because they no longer lay eggs. An owner could go a decade, waiting for their six or eight aged birds to die of natural causes, before being allowed by the city to get six or eight new laying hens, if the arbitrarily inadequate limit is not increased considerably. All of that and so much more, backed up with the statistics that the commission stated this summer that it was in search of, and all of it taking into consideration the needs of neighbors and the owners, as well as the well-being of the chickens themselves.

Each month I presented another facet of why the backyard poultry ordinances, both as currently written, and as proposed, were not in anyone's best interest, and felt that my time had been profitably invested in the research, attendance, and presentation. I felt we citizens were accomplishing something innovative and important for both our animals and for the citizens of Tulsa.

Until December 2nd, that is. The commission members' misguided personal opinions persistently outweighed the knowledge being offered them by a few thousand of Tulsa's experienced chicken owners. Our environmentally-friendly, socially-conscious, small-government proposals were overridden when Susan Savage, head of the commission, led the vote to pass the chicken section of the new ordinances in its exact original (proposed draft) form, unencumbered by any of the insight that had been offered to her all year. We, the governed, made suggestions of how we would like to be governed, and who would benefit. We set our anticipations high for this commission to factor in the new information we provided them. And were dismissed.

After I had requested twice that night alone that the commission meet with a group of chicken owners before the current proposal was put up for a vote to as written, we were denied yet again. The vote occurred on our section, absolutely nothing having been worth the commission's consideration. Nothing presented to them had made any difference or was even worth them pausing a month to thoroughly read what we'd spent months preparing.

But then, somehow, it became clear to the commission that their wording on the show dog hobbyist section, and the trap-neuter-release / community cat issues were not in line with best practices, or even with reality, in those areas. For instance, a hobbyist owner of AKC breeds is allowed to keep a certain number of unaltered dogs for the purpose of showing and breeding prize-winning lines. But the wording requires that any dog not shown for a certain number of months must be spayed or neutered. This is not how the industry operates. A blue-ribbon dog who has achieved awards should continue to be bred if the owner so desires, even if it is no longer competing in championships. A six-month or year to produce a littler or two is not adequate, if the dog stops showing and must be altered according to the current, and even proposed ordinances. Somehow, the hobbyists had finally made the commission see that they hadn't been listening though this was all explained to them over the period of months. And then the TNR proponents had a similar breakthrough with the commission, after most of the public had left, though the meeting was not adjourned.

The commission opted to meet individually with each of those two groups at a future , undecided date, to better understand the gross discrepancies between the ordinances as written and as they'd have to be changed to not be out of sync with the industries / organizations they govern. Those groups would finally be allowed to contribute their understanding before the wording was approved in their areas, and it felt like nothing short of a miracle that the commission finally realized it doesn't understand the topics at hand adequately enough to be making the kinds of recommendations it has been. A gross lack of understanding in each of those two areas could at long last be remedied.

When those two meetings were agreed upon I began waving my hand in the air and I was addressed by Susan Savage and told that the time for public comment was over. My sheer obstinance fueled me to speak out of turn at that point. Like the dog hobbyists and the TNR advocates, the commission just hadn't seen yet that they had a similar lack of fundamental understanding in our area of expertise either. If the other two groups were going to receive the individual treatment that they deserved, then I was going to demand that we would too, especially since we'd been asking for this very thing since July. I was there to represent people too, and to insist that the commission concede its considerable lack of knowledge (despite our efforts to date) in our area too, even if they had just voted to close discussion on our section. And surprisingly, Susan Savage agreed, as can be seen at the very end of the livestream.

Whether any of our three groups (dog breeders and show participants, chicken owners, and community cat advocates) will ever get the chance to actually discuss matters with the commission remains to be seen. Considering how the regularly scheduled general meetings of the commission have been known to be re-scheduled, or to not appear on the city's website calendar, and e-mail reminders before them have not always gone out without US reminding THEM first, there's no guarantee we'll ever be given a date to speak with them, not to mention be told about it in advance. And while I'd like to believe that we can all sit down and have a good, productive talk and actually change some of the profoundly backward things about the current ordinances (chickens, TNR, and hobbyist show dogs, all) in a way that would make Tulsa proud, I'm not so sure that will ever happen. The commission may still think it knows best, and resent us suggesting otherwise.

Earlier during the December 2nd meeting, as I told you, I handed out 17 pages of significant problems with the current ordinances, pertaining to backyard poultry, to each of the commission members. Then while the other attendees were given their five minutes each of open-mic time in front of the commission, Susan Savage was not listening to them, but was reading my handouts. She admitted as much out loud before the end of the meeting. Now either she was listening to the other members of the public's concerns or she was skimming what I'd handed her. There was no time for her to have actually, thoughtfully read through what took several people several months to research and compile. Maybe Ms. Savage is an extraordinarily talented woman, capable of digesting large amounts of new information and statistics in a miraculously short amount of time, and weighing all the implications on the spot, but is she capable of simultaneously listening to the public that she's tasked with hearing out? Or is the public comment time allotted in each meeting just so the attendees FEEL heard, not to actually BE heard?

At present it seems no consideration is being given to anything presented by anyone fundamentally informed on the backyard poultry topic. It seems at no point have the commission members been concerned about properly informing themselves on how to make their forthcoming recommendations to the city council more realistic. A wealth of knowledge has been given to them at every turn, with reasonable suggestions as counter-offers to the new ordinance wording, starting the bargaining process, but our work has only been discarded to date, so far as we can tell. The commission seems to lack the curiosity to look into other involved parties' perspectives adequately.

At no point has the commission discussed with citizens the things being brought to their attention during these meetings. We present our concerns to them, bringing in experts from the various fields, and while the commission may ask questions, or request clarifications, at no point have the citizens of Tulsa been allowed to ask questions of the commission and been granted real answers, or even a healthy conversation, back and forth, ensuring that the commission walks away with any more grasp of the topics at hand than they walked in with. Even local businesses, who pay City of Tulsa sales tax, which stand to grow in a more flock-friendly atmosphere have begun to weigh in on the fight.

A manager at Southern Agriculture:

Tulsa backyard chicken keepers spend tens of thousands of dollars annually on food, supplies, and equipment for their birds. Most of this money is spent locally, as opposed to online purchases. Even in Midtown Tulsa, a pet supply retailer who stocks a complete range of poultry related products can expect to see $10-25,000 annually spent on food and supplies.

Poultry keepers are also well known for upcycling for their housing, diverting construction materials from the waste stream. Food waste is also used for backyard chickens. The self sufficiency and sustainability values associated with backyard poultry provide more benefits than just fresh eggs.

Chad Chalk, owner of Animal Health Supply on 15th, since 1982:

My sales of chicken-related supplies and feed have increased decade over decade, selling mostly to people who raise flocks inside Tulsa city limits, where our shop is located and where we pay sales tax. We sell layer pellets, feed, straw, scratch, waterers, bedding, and even harnesses.

The United States Constitution wasn't written to restrain citizens' behavior, but to restrain the government from unnecessarily limiting citizens' rights. Mayor Bynum serves at the pleasure of the people of Tulsa. This commission serves at the pleasure of Mayor Bynum. At what point in the process do We the People get to ensure that this mayor and this commission understand that they work for US, and not the other way around? When will Bynum admit that this commission's current trajectory is anything but, in his own words, "...better serving the citizens of Tulsa?" That remains to be seen.