Council chickens out of revising poultry rules

On Wednesday, April 28, 2021, the Tulsa City Council approved a massive rewrite of the city's animal ordinance (Title 2), which covers everything from pets to livestock to homing pigeons, at its regular 5 p.m. meeting. But the update didn't make any changes to the rules for raising chickens in residential areas, despite much input from citizens hoping to introduce best practices from other cities which line up with the practicalities of raising a healthy home flock.

The draft ordinance was developed by a commission of socially connected non-experts (with one exception), led by former Democrat Mayor Susan Savage. That draft passed through the Council committee process the previous two Wednesdays, and a few councilors proposed significant amendments. In the end, the revision didn't touch the poultry rules, was passed unanimously without debate, and with only one comment from the public.

The agenda item for the revised animal ordinance had three files linked, which I've uploaded here for future reference.

• The new Title 2, as approved by the City Council
• The new Title 2, using markup to show insertions and deletions from the previous ordinance.
• Summary of changes to Title 2, updated by City Council staff

You can watch the entirety of Wednesday's meeting, a mere 40 minutes long, on Facebook and (eventually) on the City of Tulsa video on demand platform.

The new ordinance was delayed for over a year to the CCP Bat Virus; the commission had completed its work just before everything was shut down for the pandemic. In March 2020, BatesLine published an essay by Tina Nettles, on the Tulsa Animal Welfare Commission's contempt for the input of ordinary Tulsans who are knowledgeable about animals. Nettles, a writer and Tulsa resident, raises chickens in her backyard for the eggs as part of an effort to improve her family's self-sufficiency: She also grows vegetables and has a number of dwarf fruit trees in her backyard -- a lot typical for their 1950s midtown neighborhood. She and a group of her fellow backyard chicken farmers took every opportunity to share their input and expertise with the commission, to clear up misconceptions, and to point the commission to better ordinances in use in our peer cities. All to no avail -- their input was ignored.

After the commission completed its draft ordinance, the focus shifted to the City Council. While a couple of councilors were willing to give Tulsa's chicken owners a hearing, many seem to have closed their minds. A Public Radio Tulsa report on last week's Council committee meeting on the chicken rules and explains why councilors were unable to agree on changes relating to poultry. The following comments were in response to Democrat District 4 Councilor Kara Joy McKee's proposal to reduce the required minimum distance between a chicken coop and the nearest home from 35 feet (the distance in the current proposal) to 25 feet, to give residents on smaller lots the opportunity to raise chickens if they choose. The dismissive attitudes on display ought to dismay every Tulsan across the political spectrum.

[Democrat] District 7 Councilor Lori Decter Wright said cutting the minimum distance even more isn't a good idea.

"In our cul-de-sac neighborhoods especially, 25 feet in a cul-de-sac, every backyard could have a chicken coop. That's not going to be clean or safe," Decter Wright said.

It's highly doubtful that large numbers of residents of Decter Wright's district in south Tulsa are going to raise chickens in their backyard, much less a whole cul-de-sac full. Most of the neighborhoods in her district have large enough lots that the higher minimum distance wouldn't prevent everyone who wanted chickens from having them, but the higher distances would pose a problem to homeowners on smaller lots in less affluent districts.

[Democrat] District 5 Councilor Mykey Arthrell-Knezek said less than 35 feet didn't fly with Animal Welfare Commission Chair and former Mayor Susan Savage.

"When I proposed a 30-foot, Mayor Savage said no way. She was, like, '35 minimum,'" Knezek said.

Now, I credit Arthrell-Knezek with listening to chicken owners and proposing amendments to make the laws line up with best practices (as you'll see in the next paragraph). But this comment reveals an attitude that cripples democracy in Tulsa: The idea that elected city councilors need the permission of bureaucrats, appointed board members, or lobbyists to set policy. Susan Savage hasn't been mayor since 2002. She was appointed to lead the committee that reviewed the animal ordinance. Savage has no expertise in this area. With one exception (Christine Kunzweiler, wife of the DA and a veterinarian), none of Mayor Bynum IV's appointees to the Tulsa Animal Welfare Commission have any expertise, as I detailed in my intro to Tina Nettles's essay.

In any event, the Commission's work is over, they've made their recommendation, and now it's the Council's power and obligation to modify the recommendation or reject it altogether in the interest of the ordinary Tulsans who can't afford to hire lobbyists and don't have social connections like Savage & Co. The only lever most of us have over city government is our vote. If the City Council has been gaslit into believing that they must defer to unelected experts, our influence is limited to selecting which person gets to draw a salary to be a rubber stamp.

Arthrell-Knezek has also proposed allowing people to have up to 10 adult birds and doing away with a ban on roosters older than eight weeks, but some councilors would like to refine that. [Democrat] District 3 Councilor Crista Patrick said she wants to see a limit of one rooster per flock of hens.

"Only to avoid in my neck of the woods, we have less-than-honorable people that like to engage in cockfighting, and I do not want them to legally be able to say, 'I'm allowed to have 10 roosters at a time,'" Patrick said.

Cockfighting is already against the law. Those who are already breaking the law to hold cockfights have already found a way around rooster limits, but rooster limits hurt people raising chickens to feed their families.

The eight-week limit is problematic because chicks don't get big enough by that time to be harvested for meat (except for the commercial, factory-farm raised breed). This has been explained to the Animal Welfare Commission and the city councilors by the backyard chicken growers, but the commission ignored their input and most of the council seems ready to do the same.

Patrick's district primarily covers northeast Tulsa. District 8 Councilor Phil Lakin said his constituents have an entirely different perspective.

"For some reason, people in my area -- maybe because we're just more urban down in south Tulsa, there's not very much open space -- they're not very keen on -- the ones at least who have responded to me so far, I'll get a completely different reaction probably as I say this -- are just not keen on allowing any roosters whatsoever," Lakin said.

It seems unlikely to me that the residents of one of Tulsa's wealthiest council districts are likely to want to raise chickens to feed their families. I suspect that homeowners' association rules and deed restrictions would prevent it even if the law allowed it. Lakin's reaction points the problem with one-size-fits-all policies for a city as geographically large and economically diverse as Tulsa. Nearly all of our peer regional cities have a zoning tool often known as a neighborhood conservation district, a concept I've been championing for more than two decades, which allows customizing land use rules to protect the character of an established neighborhood.

Lakin's comment also reveals an atrophied view of liberty. Because his constituents don't want the option to raise chickens, no one in Tulsa should have it. Easy for the head of a multi-billion-dollar foundation to say.

If you're wondering why there was only one public comment on this massive change to city law: Using COVID-19 as a justification, the Council allows public comment to be submitted only via email or audio recording via phone by 5 pm the day before the meeting, as described in today's agenda. (You could still email your councilor at distX@tulsacouncil.org, replacing the X with the district number, but those comments won't be presented as part of the public meeting.)

One problem with this approach is that members of the public cannot adjust their remarks in response to previous comments, official presentations, or the demeanor of the councilors. When making live comments, it's possible to say, "I agree with what the previous speaker said, and here are some additional arguments in favor of this view," or "Let me clarify what the previous speaker was trying to say." Without the ability to react to other speakers, public comments are apt to repeat the same points over and over again, and the councilors are apt to tune them out. When commenting at an in-person public meeting, you could make eye contact with each of the councilors, even address each by name if you sense attention is drifting. Remote meetings eliminate this avenue for citizen influence, along with the power of filling the gallery of the council chamber with angry citizens, applauding and booing.