You’ve probably heard of an emotional support dog, but have you ever heard of an emotional support chicken?
Jim Wilson has lived in Lakeside Park with his family since 2013. His daughter has autism and, Wilson said, the chickens they purchased a couple years after moving into their home have been of great value to her.
The Wilsons were cited last year because chickens are not allowed under Lakeside Park ordinance, and the issue came before the city council as the Wilsons attempted to negotiate the local policy landscape in an effort to lawfully own the chickens.
A second reading on the ordinance is scheduled for Monday, and the proposal’s journey through the legislative process has been long and at times rancorous as tensions among the city council have spilled over into discussions about the chickens.
The citation “flabbergasted us,” Beth Wilson, a self-proclaimed “misplaced RN” and Jim Wilson’s wife, told LINK nky. It came from Kenton County Planning and Development Services, or PDS, which had also cited the Wilsons for keeping a camper in their yard as well as the coop where the chickens lived. The Wilsons later moved their camper from their yard.
Prior to the citations, the Wilsons said, they believed the chickens were allowed. The city began prohibiting chickens under its nuisance ordinance around 2015. They figured they would have been grandfathered in.
“As long as they’re clean, and there’s not a horde of them, and there’s no roosters, I think they add [value],” Wilson said on Feb. 10 before asking the council to consider adding them as allowable pets under the city ordinance.
The firstcitation came in May of 2024, the Wilsons said. About year later, in March 2025 after various interactions with PDS, they went before the Kenton County Code Enforcement Board to plead their case. During the hearing, the Wilsons cited literature from Psychology Today and their family’s own medical documentation in an effort to demonstrate the efficacy and necessity of chickens as therapy animals.
“It’s [,caring for the chickens,] a tool for someone that’s autistic to have routine, and it’s good to maintain routine at any age,” Jim Wilson said.
Prior to the code enforcement hearing, the Wilsons said they had reached out to Lakeside Park Mayor Paul Markgraf, asking him to speak to the board and advocate for a continuance on the citation while the city worked out its ordinance proposal, but Markgraf declined hoping to stay neutral and let PDS complete its process.
Meeting minutes from the code enforcement hearing corroborate this: Greg Voss, who serves as the attorney for both the code enforcement board and the Lakeside Park council, “read a text he received from the mayor which read that the [appellants] respectfully asked for him to persuade the [Board] to grant a continuance until their next meeting and he respectfully declined.” The minutes also indicated that Voss “mentioned that the mayor was not in favor of a continuance.”
The minutes state the Wilsons’ medical documents could not be entered into the evidence record for confidentiality reasons, but one of the board members, Taylor Mill Rep. Roger Braden “stated that this is an atypical case with a medical and therapeutic basis to it and action has been taken to make changes but could be more than sixty days,” the minutes read. “He made a motion to carry the case over for ninety days.”
The board was “sympathetic,” Jim Wilson said, so the motion passed, giving the Wilsons 90 days to work it out with the city.
The Wilsons and other Lakeside Park residents – as well as some people who were not city residents, such Elsmere’s “chicken man,” Eric Bunzow, who advocated for chicken regulations in his own city – came out to the city council meeting on March 10 to voice their views on the matter. Opinions were mixed: Some didn’t seem to have an issue with the chickens, whereas others were worried about the possibility of noise, foul (no pun intended) odors and the potential of attracting pests (points the Wilsons are skeptical of). At least one speaker thought the ordinance needed to be refined.
The Wilsons have begun circulating a petition advocating for an ordinance change. The petition had 498 signatures, 286 of which were from Lakeside Park residents, as of April 9. Lakeside Park had 2,841 residents as of the 2020 census.
The Wilsons and their chickens aren’t the only players in this story, however.
Emotional support chickens: The legislative process
“It seems for the past two months there’s been an adversarial tone that’s entered these meetings,” said Councilember Brian Waite at the Feb. 10 meeting. “It’s fair to have questions and disagreements and debate, and that’s what democracy is, obviously. But I do take issue with the insinuation of nefarious or sinister happenings by the administration or council.”
Although he didn’t mention her name when he said this, Waite’s statement was directed toward comments made earlier in the meeting by the newest member of the council, Cassi Schabell, who garnered the highest number of votes in the November election. Earlier in the meeting when the council was set to vote on approving the meeting minutes for a special meeting on Jan. 30, Schabell had leveled criticism on City Clerk Teresa Bruck’s draft and had requested the minutes be changed.
“I’m further concerned that the city requested that TBNK [public access broadcasting] not provide the video footage of the special meeting on January 30 but only provide audio recording to the clerk,and did not request TBNK to publish the recording. What is the intent of this?” Schabell said, adding that “it seems nefarious.”
Schabell’s motion failed to garner a second from another council member, so no vote took place and the minutes remained unchanged. She had also motioned for changes to the meeting minutes for the Jan. 13 minutes but likewise failed to earn a second.
The exchange over the minutes was emblematic of discussions within the council chambers since the beginning of the year with otherwise routine concerns spiraling off into tense quarrels over parliamentary process, administrative power and the good faith of everyone involved.
This is relevant to the chickens because Schabell was the one who first proposed the ordinance to the council. Schabell said that she modeled the ordinance after existing ordinances for chickens in Erlanger. It’s taken several forms, the first of which called for amending the nuisance ordinance that prohibited the chickens. She later revised the ordinance to add a whole new section to the city code per the advise of Voss.
The most recent version, if passed, would allow for chickens on home properties as long as there’s adequate housing for the chickens that’s at least 25 feet away from an adjoining residence. Feed would need to be stored separately, and roosters would not be allowed.
In a phone call with LINK nky, Schabell said she first sent the proposal to the mayor the Thursday before the February meeting. Markgraf told LINK nky that he prefers to give at least a week for the attorney and himself to look over an ordinance before adding it to a meeting’s agenda. As a result, the proposal did not appear as an agenda item in February.
Still, Schabell brought the ordinance itself, as well as the overall process of bringing ordinances before the council up at the February meeting, but her motion to perform a first reading of the ordinance at the meeting failed to garner a second. The ordinance later went through a first reading at the March meeting.
Schabell has made numerous motions to amend or introduce policy at the meetings over the last several months, but her motions frequently died for lack of a second from another council member.
Under conventional meeting rules, council members don’t engage in discussion on a motion without a second (never mind a vote). Markgraf is a stickler for this process, and as a result Schabell and the mayor have butted heads in meetings.
Rule of the roost
In conversation with LINK nky, Schabell characterized the process by which a council member could get something on the agenda as onerous and inaccessible. Markgraf denied this.
“I have not stopped her from bringing anything to consideration,” Markgraf said.
The Wilsons said they respected Schabell for advocating for the ordinance.
“We have a lot of respect for her and appreciate everything that she’s done,” Jim Wilson said. “She has a lot of energy. She really cares about the city.”
When asked about the dynamic on the council, Jim Wilson just hopes none of that gets in the way of his daughter and her six emotional support chickens getting a fair shake before the city.
In addition to the chicken ordinance, the council will consider another ordinance Schabell proposed at Monday’s meeting.
If passed, that ordinance would restructure the council meetings into two, rather than one meeting a month: a caucus meeting, where members would engage in discussion, and a legislative meeting, where the members would cast votes. Erlanger operates under a similar structure.
The council will also hear a municipal order proposed by Markgraf that if passed would institute a code of conduct for council members and meeting attendees and grant the mayor enforcement powers.
The meeting begins at 7 p.m. on Monday, April 14 at the Lakeside Park City Building on Buttermilk Pike.