Council Flies to the Defense of Chicken Lady

The Chicken Lady of Redondo Beach, whose neighbors have tried for years to prevent her from keeping a flock of back-yard birds, won another round in the long-running feud Wednesday when the City Council voted not to reconsider her permit for keeping pet chickens.

Tom White, an orthodontist, bought property with his wife more than three years ago for their dream house only to discover that his prospective next-door neighbor had a yard full of pet poultry. He had asked the council to revoke the wild animal permit they issued two years ago to 37-year-old Roseanne Smith.

White told the council that Smith had displayed “contempt for the law” by keeping several dozen chickens on her South Irena Avenue property two years ago and on some occasions since then in violation of a city resolution that allowed her to keep only six.

But the council angrily turned down the request.

“You don’t even know if it’s a discomfort living next to chickens,” snapped Councilwoman Barbara Doerr. “You don’t even live on the property yet.”

And Councilman Stevan Colin said that “the hammering will probably make more noise than the chickens” when construction begins next month on White’s five-bedroom house.

Smith said Thursday she will not let her flock grow past the half-dozen chickens she is permitted. But she added that she is suspicious of White’s motives.

“They just don’t like us,” Smith said. “The animals are just an excuse.”

“The Chicken Situation,” as White and his wife call it, has gone on for more than three years, since the Whites bought the lot next door to the seaside cottage where Smith has lived all her life. Eager to snap up the lush corner lot for their planned Mediterranean-style estate, the Whites said they did not realize until after they bought the property that the yard next door was full of roosters and hens.

When neighborly appeals to remove the birds did not work, the Whites went to City Hall. The council passed a resolution limiting Smith’s brood to six birds, but soon the yard was again full of chickens. The Whites took Smith to court, where she was convicted of violating the conditions of the permit and placed on two years’ probation, which ended Feb. 23.

In December, after the Whites discovered that Smith’s yard was again filled with birds, they reported the probation violation, and Smith was ordered by a court commissioner who handled the case to get rid of her flock altogether. But within weeks, the chickens had been spotted again in Smith’s yard, and the Whites had filed a new complaint with the court.

By the time the new complaint made it to a hearing, Smith’s probation had come to an end. The court commissioner this time declined to punish her, noting that the criminal system had done everything it could.

So White took the matter to the City Council.

“It’s not like we’re trying to stomp out chickens. I’m a reasonable person and was happy to live with the compromise set two years ago,” White said. “But it wasn’t abided by. It was a chicken farm over there. And come hell or high water, that woman will have chickens, and as many as she wants.”

White chided the council afterward for “their inability to act effectively,” and he questioned their objectivity in the matter.

“I’ve heard one council member has ducks,” he confided.

In fact, Colin conceded, he “used to have ducks three or four years ago,” and his nephew now has two.

“But those ducks are personally not my personal ducks,” Colin insisted, denying any conflict of interest.