– The St. Martinville City Council voted to amend its burn ordinance at Monday’s council meeting, and agreed to amend its ordinance involving high grass to allow properties that have been used to grow hay for years to continue that practice.
Councilman Mike Fuselier asked the council to look into the burn ordinance to increase the size of burns and the required setbacks on larger properties so property owners can burn yard debris with fires that are not near neighboring homes.
“It actually serves a purpose because sometimes you have debris that instead of making the city pick it up or it’s hard to even get it to the road, you can just burn it on your property,” Fuselier said. “We still need guidelines but I think it was a little tight. We were only allowing a 6-foot diameter with certain setback, and I think we should increase that. Keep the setback but increase the pile.”
Fuselier said that on larger properties, bigger burns should be allowed within new guidelines.
Errol Greig Jr. talked to the council about the issue after a neighbor complained following his burning of some downed trees on his family’s property, which is about five acres total.
“It’s my mother’s property and my property, and she’s put me in charge of keeping it up,” Greig said. “We’ve probably got over a hundred trees on the property, and this year with the cold weather we lost about 20 citrus trees. I still haven’t finished cutting them all down. We’re talking about 25 year old trees that were 20 feet tall. It’s a lot of debris. It’s not feasible to put in a bundle.”
The city picked up the stump pieces, he said, but he still had a lot of debris left from cutting down those trees and a few that had been diseased.
“We have a safe place to burn,” Greig said. .
Greig said he’s always called Evangeline Volunteer Fire Department Chief Mark Breaux to let him know he was burning debris on the one or two times a year he does so, in case someone called about the fire.
Greig said that in looking for the city’s burn ordinance online he was mistakenly directed to one for Martinsville, Virginia, and discovered the ordinance was less restrictive than St. Martinville’s.
Breaux said he does not have problems with increasing the size of the burn from 6 feet to 10 feet in diameter, and anyone wishing to have a bigger burn would have to get permission from the parish fire chief.
Property
Greig also asked that the ordinance also allow burns up until 8 p.m. because the wind dies down more later in the evening.
“I’m not picking windy days,” he said. “I’ve been very selective. And I’m not using gasoline (to start the fire).”
The council voted to amend the ordinance to allow burns of 10 feet in diameter with larger burns allowed only with written permission from the fire chief.
The city ordinance also would be cleared up to have a 100-foot clearance.
The ordinance will be introduced at the next council meeting.
Two other property owners, Kathryn Pierce and Nancy Manning, asked the council to allow them to keep using their property on MLK Boulevard to continue growing hay.
The city council had changed its high grass ordinance in June to not allow any grass grown over 12 inches high in the city, which would prevent people from using their property to grow hay. The city had the 12-inch ordinance on the books but had not been enforcing it for people who said they wanted to grow hay.
City attorney Allan Durand said that the city’s zoning ordinances allow agricultural activity in the city but the separate grass ordinance limits the height of grass grown.
But Durand said that former parish attorney and former Parish President Chester Cedars holds the opinion that once someone has a right to do something on their property, the city can’t change the laws to take that property right away.
“So, if there’s property in the city that was being used to grow hay at the time we passed the (original) ordinance with the 12-inch limitation, the 12-inch limitation would not apply to that property,” Durand said. “But if it’s somebody who’s not historically used it to make hay at the time we passed that ordinance, they did not have any use in place which would be grandfathered in.”
The property in question had been used to make hay for years before the original 12-inch grass ordinance was passed, Durand said, so should be allowed to continue to be used for that purpose.
“What we should do, out of an abundance of caution, for anybody who approaches us with this request, is we should get them to sign a little one-paragraph affidavit saying that they know this property has been used to make hay for however far back you go (to the ordinance date) and we’ll keep that in the records.”
If property owners could not show their property had been used to make hay from that time, then the exception would not be granted.
The city also would amend the ordinance to cut a 20-foot perimeter around the hay so that vermin aren’t living in the high grass near other people’s homes. The perimeter would have to be kept at no higher than 16 inches.
Nuisance properties The council addressed nuisance properties again with the owner of properties at 311 W. Madison and 315 W. Madison sending notification to the city that she planned to demolish the buildings there at her own expense by Dec. 31.
The property at 322 Columbus will be put out for bid for demolishing after zoning coordinator Otis Chatman takes photos of the property The council also asked Police Chief Ricky Martin to have his officers enforce the city’s food sales and permit ordinances for people who are cooking and selling food in popup places along city streets. The police will issue citations for those breaking the ordinance, which carries a $500 fine for each offense, and shut down the popup sales.
The city also will have Chatman post notices on properties that are drawing nuisance complaints, if certified letters do not reach the property owners within 10 days. If that fails, the city will post a notification in the official journal for two weeks and then be able to act on the nuisance complaint.
In Other Business
The council also granted permission to the St. Martinville Garden Club to hold its annual Christmas Tour of Homes, and to the St. Martinville Senior High Alumni group to hold several homecoming activities on city property.
The Garden Club’s request also asked for eight barricades on Evangeline Boulevard during the tour.
The alumni group is planning events around the school’s Oct. 31 homecoming game.
Festivities will include four events, including a homecoming parade on Oct. 26 from 1-2 p.m. followed by the Fall Fest in Magnolia Park on the same day.
On Oct. 31 at Magnolia Park the group will hold a homecoming tailgate.
