Jamestown officials have already said city residents can’t own chickens or other barnyard animals like pigs.

Yet, if you’re on the south side of the city it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence over the past couple of years to hear a rooster crowing at all hours of the day or to see a pig roaming through south side yards. Keep that in mind as City Council members discuss limits to the number of cats city residents can house.

We’re not saying there shouldn’t be limits on the number of cats people can have. We believe there should be limits. Too often, we see reports of police officers entering squalid conditions in city apartments that include obscene amounts of animal waste in places where children live. There is a very good reason to limit the number of animals that can live inside apartments. It’s the same reason why we have human occupancy limits for apartments – having too many people or animals inside small apartments can very easily create health and safety issues. Some people will disagree, but we have read enough police incidents charging city residents with endangering the welfare of a child that include accumulations of animal waste to know limits need to be set.

Our concern is plowing ahead with a new ordinance without a way to enforce the ordinance. Kacie Foulk, deputy development director, was very clear with council members recently that limits on cats in city homes isn’t a new idea. It’s been around for years – and there is one reason why it hasn’t been pursued.

“We don’t have anyone to enforce it. That’s like a building inspector thing. The police department manages the dog part of the code and they have a dog control officer. We don’t have anyone that would be able to police the cat issue.”

Realistically, the city doesn’t have much of a way to enforce its limit on dogs, either.

City officials are considering ways to potentially limit the amount of cats city residents can own, similar to city rules about dogs that are basically enforced if there is a complaint, if someone tries to license too many dogs or if police are called to a residence for something else and see that there are far too many dogs inside.

Consider us skeptical when new ordinances are discussed with sketchy enforcement mechanisms. This is one such time.

“I know it’s going to be tricky to enforce it, but I think when there’s a will there’s a way,” said councilman Dan Gonzalez, D-At Large, during a Housing Committee meeting last week.

Last week, we wrote about the state law and U.S. Constitutional difficulties the city has helping residents who actively want to clean up their neighborhood. Anyone who has driven down Crescent Street recently sees a house with its contents strewn across the front lawn. Despite city prohibitions it will take time to be able to clean that mess up because of the issues that our Sara Holthouse discussed with city officials.

There may be a will, but is there a legal way? That needs to be the first question asked and answered before proceeding with an ordinance that we believe is needed, but that we aren’t sure is possible unless it is to penalize people after the fact.