Kasson woman testifies against city’s pet ordinance

(ABC 6 News) – Kasson’s city pet ordinance does not allow for people to have more than three unlicensed pets within city limits, but Jennifer Voss and her family have five dogs.

She attended Wednesday night’s city council meeting in Kasson to ask for change.

It’s been in place in the city of Kasson for over 20 years and Voss and her family have lived here for half that time. They’ve always owned at least two dogs at one time and up until this spring, never had an issues with it.

Voss is a dog lover and she and her family always take the time for all five of her dogs to get out for walks three times a day.

Two of their dogs had puppies this last winter and the family decided to keep the runt of the litter, making it the first time they’ve ever had five.

While walking all the dogs in may, an officer in town told her she was violating city ordinance owning all of them. The same officer approached her son a few weeks back reminding him of said ordinance.

And after making a Facebook post to the community, she found out she wasn’t the only one in violation or unaware of this ordinance.

“There’s people that have posted that, ‘oh my gosh, I didn’t realize this ordinance was there. I’m in violation as well. All of them are very much in support of getting the ordinance changed.”

While it’s a rarely been an issue in the 20 years of the ordinance, city administrator Tim Ibisch says it was put in place as a matter of residents respecting their neighbors.

“I think the reason that the ordinance exists is primarily to protect the neighbors. We’ve received a lot of complaints from neighbors about parking dogs and other issues and I think that’s why it’s kind of in place.”

Voss made her plea to the council to reconsider the city ordinance and she is hopeful they take into consideration her history of being a good pet owner.