Kent chicken activist calls foul

Ridiculous. That's what chicken activist Tami Jackson calls city codes that ban residents from raising poultry in most neighborhood yards.

Now Kent's Planning and Economic Development committee say they agree with Jackson, who has led a year-long fight to change codes that require 20,000 square feet of land to keep chickens, ducks and other fowl.

At a meeting last Monday, the committee approved a measure to allow people with smaller yards to raise backyard birds. The recommendation, which will be voted on by the council Tuesday, has strong support, City Council President Deborah Ranniger said.

"Tami's done a really nice job of keeping a comfortable coop for her chickens," said Ranniger, one of four council members to visit Jackson's home last Sunday afternoon. Bob O'Brien, Debbie Raplee and Ron Harmon also popped in, Jackson said.

The council accepted Jackson's invitation to see her property on Kent's East Hill after a neighbor accused her of raising her three chickens and two ducks in squalor.

Jackson originally brought the codes to the attention of the council last fall when the same neighbor reported her to the city for keeping the animals on a 12,000-square-foot lot.

The city told Jackson that she would have to remove the birds or pay $500 a day in fines.

Jackson appealed the violation when she learned that Kent's regulations were harsher than urban neighborhoods in Bellevue and Seattle.

A massage therapist and self-professed nature-lover, Jackson said she didn't know she violated city law by raising chickens in her backyard. She raises her hens — Cheech, Chong and Blondie — for their eggs. Fertilizer from the birds goes into an organic garden, where she grows medicinal herbs.

"I was outraged," said Jackson, who moved to her Kent home nearly three years ago so she would have room for a garden and pets.

A few neighbors were angry when they learned that they, too, had illegal birds.

Jackson's neighbor, Miranda Ward, 11, became frightened when she considered the potential fate of Kitten and Speedy, hens she inherited from her grandmother a year ago.

Other neighbors have joined her with a similar argument: Kent codes were set decades ago when residential lots were bigger and few people lived on lots smaller than half an acre.

Jackson created a Web site and blog last year to rally more supporters for her cause.

The measure approved by the Planning and Economic Development committee will allow more residents to legally keep chickens. The new code is similar to Seattle regulations. If passed, a person on a 5,000-square-foot lot could have three chickens. One more would be allowed for each additional 1,000 square feet of property.

Jackson's husband, Doug Grimes, said his wife has put in hundreds of hours the past year advocating an update in the code. "I never pictured chickens becoming a rebel cause," Grimes said.

Karen Johnson: 253-234-8605 or karenjohnson@seattletimes.com