The New Iberia City Council began the process to form a committee that will hopefully crack down on city nuisance laws at Tuesday’s meeting.

District 5 Councilwoman Sherry Guidry brought up the issue several months back, specifically in regard to junk cars that were being tagged by city workers.

“I originally placed it on the agenda several months back due to constituents complaining that their cars were tagged and not understanding the procedure to resolve the issue,” Guidry said. “If their car was tagged and it was noticed after hours, I referred them to the city’s website. To my surprise, I looked up some things and I found it’s kind of hard for the average citizen to find what they need about a tagged car on the website.”

Guidry asked for an update at Tuesday’s meeting, and also requested that the length of time for residents to resolve the issue be extended from 15 business days to 30 days. She also requested that the city make its website more user-friendly for residents to understand the issue better.

“With the mayor’s permission, I’m requesting we form a committee to make it clear to the citizens of New Iberia, maybe a detailed list on how to follow steps in order to remove the tag on your car or answer questions you have.”

City Attorney Jeff Simon said the junk car ordinance is only one of a list of ordinances that deal with nuisance laws, and suggested it would be a better approach to address all of them in a committee.

Simon said one of the main problems with the laws is that they are confusing, due to laws being passed in different periods that address similar concerns.  

“If you try to read the code of ordinances we have a number of different chapters that talk about the same thing,” Simon said.  “Instead of just dealing with the vehicle part, maybe we talk about all of these things because they’re related.”

Simon said the first step was to figure out how to simplify the ordinances, which would be done at committee. After that, the city would have to budget money to cover the administrative costs that come along with taking the issue seriously.

Finally, Simon said city court would have to begin enforcing the laws as well.

“We need to take a look at enforcing some of these ordinances through city court prosecutions for misdemeanors. A violation of the code of ordinances is punishable by up to $500 and 60 days in prison. For a lot of folks, that will catch their attention.”

One of the problems, he said, is that law enforcement is not citing residents violating junk car or grass laws.

“If we have a department of our own we’ll have to tune this in, if we don’t and we renew a contract we’ll have to talk to the sheriff about a way to build that into the contract, which will cost more money,” Simon said. “It will cost more money either way.”