The city’s two-dog limit per household is under review.

A Joliet City Council committee took up the question of how many dogs are too many on Wednesday.

The subject came up when staff sought a new process for dealing with multi-dog complaints to avoid neighbor versus neighbor confrontations at city hearings.

A recent “neighbor feud” brought back memories of when such clashes were becoming common, city Planner Jim Torri told the Land Use and Legislative Committee.

“It got ugly,” Torri said.

The city then and now puts the two-dog limit in its zoning ordinance for residential areas. That allows people who want more than two to come to the Zoning Board of Appeals to make their case at hearings for zoning variations.

The heyday for such hearings was the late 1990s and early 2000s when, Torri said, he was getting two to three complaints a week about about over-dogged households that would take their cases to the zoning board and subsequently to the city council.

“You have this emotional petitioner coming before you wanting their dog,” Torri told the committee. “Neighbors have to come out against them at public hearings opposing this situation. It got ugly. And, some people were requesting variances for eight dogs.”

Councilwoman Jan Quillman said she remembered the eight-dog case. They were all chihuahuas, and the dog owner got the variance.

Quillman and the other two committee members, however, were reluctant to crack down.

Torri wanted to move the two-dog limit from the zoning code to the city code of ordinances, which would make it a strict limit not subject to appeals for variances.

“No matter if you have three chihuahuas or three pit bulls, you have to get rid of one,” Torri suggested.

Quillman said there are cases when people may need to take in extra dogs because a relative who owned them died. Others may be fostering dogs and exceed the two-dog limit.

“You could have one dog, and it drives the whole neighborhood crazy,” said Quillman, Others with three or four dogs may get along fine with neighbors, she said.

“Two dogs doesn’t seem like a lot of dogs,” committee Chairman Terry Morris said. “I think we need to increase the number.”

City attorney Sabrina Spano said Joliet is “on the low end” of permitted dogs per household when compared to surrounding communities. She suggested the city could increase the dog limit before moving it to the municipal code where appeals would not be allowed.

One resident at the meeting said she supported the two-dog rule.

“The unfortunate thing about pets is everybody is not respectful,” Jimmie Faye Cartwright said. “I love the ordinance the way it is. Everybody needs to know that if you move into the neighborhood the limit is two dogs.”

The committee, however, was inclined to allow more.

Staff was instructed to come back to a future meeting with an analysis of Joliet’s dog limit compared with those of other communities.

“I think three dogs are reasonable,” Councilman Herb Lande said, adding that from what he has seen other communities are “more lenient than we are.”