More than a dozen residents came to Wednesday’s City Council meeting to support a neighbor with a complaint.

Chris Dove, who lives in Westhaven Lakes, collected 215 signatures from his neighborhood and others up and down Pitchkettle Road petitioning City Council to obey the law with respect to a proposed neighboring subdivision.

Dove says the city never held a public hearing to increase the approved number of homes in the planned Foxfield Meadows neighborhood, but the change happened anyway.

“The citizens of Suffolk have a right to expect that our laws mean what they say,” Dove said during the public comment portion of the meeting. Using a Virginia Supreme Court decision, he argued that City Council has the authority to impose conditions on rezonings.

He says that the approved number of single-family homes in the development mysteriously increased from 78 to 128. The 2009 rezoning ordinance says there will be 78 single-family lots, but that number is not in the proffered conditions.

In October, the developers, Cloverleaf Development, LLC, withdrew its application for another rezoning that would have increased the number of multi-family units, reduced cash proffers for schools, public safety and road improvements, reduced the minimum square footage for single-family dwellings and altered design standards for single-family dwellings.

The developers withdrew their request because of the opposition of nearby residents.

Dove suggested that if City Council wanted to increase the number of single-family units in the development, they should “just hold a public hearing, ignore the comments of the citizens and increase the number anyway,” and then it would be legal.

After Dove spoke, the City Council continued with its meeting, which included some members addressing comments made by other speakers. When Mayor Linda T. Johnson invited a city employee to the podium to make a presentation on upcoming Christmas events, Dove interrupted the meeting from the audience and demanded that his comments be addressed.

City Attorney Ed Roettger summarized his official opinion on the matter, which was provided to Dove several meetings ago. He said no conditions can be placed on rezonings other than those volunteered by the property owner and concluded by recommending city employees and officials stop discussing the matter.

Dove wondered after the meeting how the city would reconcile Roettger’s opinion with the opinion of the state Supreme Court.

“We’re not asking for special treatment,” he said. “Just don’t try to sneak something past us.”

City spokeswoman Debbie George said after the meeting the city would have no comment on the matter besides Roettger’s opinion.

“Next year’s an election year,” Dove said.