Kudos goes out to St. John the Baptist Parish Council members and staffers with the Parish’s planning and zoning department for revising and instituting a code enforcement blitz targeting junked vehicles and neighborhood decay.

Code enforcement officers worked in teams covering 38 blocks June 19 from Woodlawn Drive to the North, Colony Park Drive to the South, Yorktowne Drive to the East and English Colony Drive to the West, tagging more than a dozen vehicles for violations.

Officers even initiated an investigation for a potential illegal home mechanic shop operating out of a residential neighborhood.

Parish leaders said Code Enforcement is experiencing a significant increase in complaints Parishwide following the sweep.

Parish leaders stress, by law, they are required to give the property owner time to correct a violation. If the violation is corrected during the permitted timeframe, the property owner will NOT be assessed costs and the case will be closed.

It’s clear to see, the seeds of something beneficial to community members is in place.

The idea was launched some time ago through Parish Council meetings where elected leaders Lennix Madere Jr., Marvin Perrilloux and Larry Snyder expressed concerns about the enforcement of St. John Parish’s junked vehicle ordinance. From that point on, Planning and Zoning Director Alexandra Carter said there was a constant conversation about the existing regulations being problematic.

“We want people to be aware that these outstanding violations do have a negative impact on neighborhoods, and we can’t continue to allow it to stand without any penalty,” Carter said.

Parish officials said loopholes were causing innocent residents to be targeted, while actual violators were finding their way around repercussions.

“In the past, if your vehicle was sitting in one place for 60 days and had an expired license plate or expired break tag, it was considered junked even if it looked perfectly fine,” Carter said. “For our retirement community or people who are out on tour, they were getting tickets. They really weren’t causing negative impacts on the community.”

Parish staffers focused code-rewriting efforts on “blight,” which allowed those involved to address Council member complaints.

St. John Planning and Zoning started looking at other communities’ codes and met with Council members.

“At some point, Councilman (Michael) Wright brought in concerns as we were distributing drafts of the ordinance,” Carter said. “It was absolutely a joint effort. We created all the drafts, wrote the ordinance and continuously talked about it with Council members to see what worked and what didn’t work for their constituents.

“There is a certain type of person that calls code enforcement and there is a certain type of person that talks to their Council member, and those people are not the same. They have different complaints. I am not hearing everything these Council members are hearing.”

That seems like basic stuff but certainly doesn’t always take place. It did in this case, and the result is a new junked vehicle ordinance that hit the books in May and led to a sweep in June.

If we follow that up this month with removed or fixed vehicles or penalty and fines through forced tows and tickets, our neighborhoods are going to benefit — through quality of life and property value.

To better assist the public, Code Enforcement has prepared common questions and answers regarding the new ordinance at sjbparish.com.

Stephen Hemelt is publisher and editor of L’OBSERVATEUR. He can be reached at 985-652-9545 or stephen.hemelt@lobservateur.com.