[StBernard] St. Bernard Parish Council set to approve LLT restrictions

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard Parish Council set to approve LLT restrictions
Published: Tuesday, June 19, 2012, 9:35 AM
 By Benjamin Alexander-Bloch, The Times-Picayune 
The St. Bernard Parish Council today is expected to approve timetables and
other development restrictions for individuals who purchase five or more of
the nearly 2,400 Louisiana Land Trust lots that still dot the parish.That
ordinance would require anyone purchasing five lots or more to complete
construction on at least one home on one of the purchased properties within
the first two years after the purchase.

The Parish Council also is expected to give the parish director of community
development the authority to approve requests to resubdivide any LLT
property and also the Department of Community Development to join adjoining
LLT properties, making them a single lot.
Future owners would then not be able to resubdivide such lots for individual
use or sale.
All individuals who purchase LLT properties, even those who purchase four or
fewer lots, would have to fence in the backyard. Any grass violations
resulting in liens valued at 50 percent of the original lot purchase price,
the ordinance states, would be considered a violation of the terms of the
original sale and could result in the property's forfeiture.
At the council meeting, the administration also is expected to discuss a
proposed cooperative endeavor agreement between the state Office of
Community Development, the Louisiana Land Trust and parish, along with the
parish's Housing, Redevelopment and Quality of Life Authority Commission's
role in accepting LLT properties. 

And after much debate in March, the council is set to appoint the St.
Bernard Voice as its official. Earlier in the year, the council debated
whether it does not meet state requirements. State law requires a parish's
official journal to have had its "principal public business office," not
necessarily its printing press, physically in the parish for five
consecutive years prior its selection.
State law also states that "a newspaper shall have only one principal public
business office." The Voice has deep roots in St. Bernard, but in 2008 the
publication was sold to the owners of the Plaquemines Gazette.