Parish Council considers veto override

Parish President Sam Jones and the Parish Council are headed for another clash.
The council voted Oct. 8 to put an override vote on the Oct. 22 agenda after Jones vetoed a zoning change obtained by Council member J Ina of Franklin.
Also Oct. 8, Councilman Mark Duhon of Amelia asked whether St. Mary residents might get the 35% discount on flood insurance that Jefferson Parish people are getting.
The veto was issued by Jones on Sept. 19. It targets a Sept. 10 vote in which the council approved Ina’s request to rezone a home he owns on Franklin’s Robert Street to neighborhood commercial. Ina plans to use the house for a group home.
At the Sept. 10 meeting, three nearby residents objected mainly to opening a residential area to business, and what might follow if the group home fails.
“Do you think I should have that right to be able to start a business as a business owner and a property owner,” Ina said in one response, “and to have the business before we talk about it failing?”
At the Oct. 8 meeting, Jones pointed to expressions of opposition and said he vetoed the rezoning “because the people don’t want it.”
“I think this is racially motivated,” said Ina, who is African American, “and I’ll save my comments for another time.”
The original vote for the rezoning was 6-2. One member was absent, and Ina and Les Rulf of Patterson abstained.
To succeed, the veto override must get yes votes from at least three-quarters of the 11-member council.
Rate reduction?
St. Mary Levee District Executive Director Tim Matte, cautioning that he’s not a flood insurance expert, answered Duhon’s call for information about Jefferson Parish’s good fortune.
Residents of unincorporated Jefferson are eligible for the 35% National Flood Insurance Program discount as of Oct. 1 because the parish is now Class 3, up from Class 5, in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Community Rating System.
Jefferson becomes the first Class 3 entity in Louisiana and only the 11th in the United States.
In St. Mary, only Morgan City participates in the rating system and has a Class 9 rating, along with Terrebonne and Houma, Matte said. That rating is good for a 5% reduction.
The Jefferson Parish government website list these factors in the improved rating:
•Improving the Building Code Effectiveness Grading Schedule to a score of 3 for residential building codes and a score of 4 for commercial building codes.
•Adopting freeboard (additional feet of flooding protection above FEMA’s minimum requirement) for all structures.
•Maintaining open spaces.
•Having a Watershed Management Plan.
•Continuing to improve the Hazard Mitigation Plan.
•Protecting our natural floodplain functions.
•Earning credit for our flood warning and response practices.
•Informing citizens of their risk of living inside levee-protected areas through an annual mailer.
“They made a commitment to significantly adopt whatever rules they had to adopt to improve their particular situation,” Matte said.
Flood insurance rates have become a major issue since FEMA adopted Risk Rating 2.0, a system that sets premiums based on individual properties rather than applying a set premium across a broader area, such as ZIP Codes.
While FEMA insists that most covered homes will see the same or lower premiums, the price of flood insurance in about a third of covered homes will see increases, some of which put the price out of reach.
Congressional leaders have tried without success to obtain the formula by which FEMA judges individual properties.