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Parish may consider subdivision plan
A discussion of Bear Road, a 700-foot stretch of roadway near Port Barre, came up during this month's meeting of the St. Landry Parish Council's Public Works Committee.
The road is now in disrepair, and the road is not part of the parish system, so official vehicles such as mail and garbage trucks won't service residents living along the road.The homeowners want help and they want the parish to provide it. But it is illegal for the parish to spend public money on private property, and most of the residents weren't told that before they invested.
Public Works Director Tim Marks said it is a problem he has to deal with all the time and one that is growing worse, with the parish adding more than 50 subdivisions in the past four years.
"The developer will just tell (the people who buy the lots) that in two years the parish will take (the road) over. Two-thirds of the people who call me, tell me that's what they were told," Marks said.
District 6 Councilman Hurlin Dupre said the parish is dealing with the complaints.
"Guess who gets all the static? We do," said Dupre, who urged the council to consider a subdivision regulation.
"We are having too much trouble. If we are going to keep accepting these private subdivisions, we need to get these roads up to code," Dupre said.
Parish President Don Menard agreed.
"This is something that has to be totally revamped," Menard said of the parish's existing subdivision acceptance program. "We get stuck with a road that is not built up to standards and then the people keep hounding us to do something about it. We are going to have to look at some smart growth planning."
Currently the parish has almost no rules concerning private subdivisions.
"We look at lot sizes and Department of Health regulations concerning wastewater," Marks said. "We have no specific regulations on road standards."
If a subdivision's roads are built to parish standards - with a 50-foot right-of-way and adequate drainage on both sides - they can be accepted into the parish system. Once accepted, it is the parish's job to maintain the roads.
Marks said that is the case in most subdivisions. The problem comes in with the roughly 15 percent of new subdivisions with substandard roads.
Longtime District 5 Councilman Ronald Buschel asked Andrea West, the council's legal adviser, to research the law. He said substandard roads have been a problem for years.
"We have been told that as long as it is a private subdivision we can't regulate anything other than the size of the lot," Buschel said.
West said, while she will have to research the issue, she sees no problem with such a regulation.
Menard agreed. "A lot of parishes do that," he said, pointing to subdivision regulations in Lafayette and St. Tammany parishes.