Bay St. Louis zoning code to be published ten years later

The City of Bay St. Louis has seen a tremendous recovery since Hurricane Katrina leveled much of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but it turns out all the codes used to shape the city’s future might not have been legally substantive. News 25’s Hank Davis has the details.
Recent findings in Bay St. Louis indicate that due to an oversight, the city has been improperly enforcing zoning code regulations that were adopted in 2010 during the recovery efforts that followed Hurricane Katrina. Bay St. Louis Mayor Les Fillingame said, “We had kind of a blank canvas across the Coast so it was very important for us to get some strong consideration to how the cities would grow back. We spent three years, three years with huge amounts of public input and we adopted on September 7th of 2010.”
But the city missed one crucial step and that means that the ordinance never became official, but it went unnoticed until a local attorney discovered the mistake while preparing a case. Attorney C. Stephen Benvenutti said, “We sent a public information request to the City of Bay St. Louis and they wrote back and said they couldn’t find proof of publication.”
The law says that unless the changes are announced in the municipalities local newspaper they never become official, that means every building permit and zoning decision made since September 2010 has been invalid.
City officials called for a special meeting to approve the publication of the code before the printing of this weekend’s edition of the Seacoast Echo. It won’t take effect for 30 days, but the city will handle business as usual. Attorney for the City of Bay St. Louis Trent Favre said, “The citizens of Bay St. Louis all adhered to that. We’ve administered the ordinance for this long. We’ve issued permits pursuit to that ordinance for this long. We’ve amended that ordinance. It’s been in effect and I think the citizens of Bay St. Louis will all realize that that ordinance is what we need to use to go forward.”