1982-03-24 Joint Public Hearing and Special Called Meeting

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• • • Minutes, Jpint Public Hearing and Special Called Meeting La Porte City Council, March 24, 1982, Page 4 Smit: I break it down this way: 22-23 big 18-wheelers, owner operated, their wage scale is much higher than the average employee. Frankly, I'm non-union up there, and I pay $9.50 per hour for laborer. Here, I will be union, then you're looking at $14 or $15 per hour. Faulkner: You're looking at a union contract? Smit: Yes. Rebecca Terry, 803 North 11th: I don't believe we need any more containers. We are looking like a garbage dump now. We don't want to live in Houston on the port. Which is what we are fast becoming, and I, for one, would like to see us stop. I live over on that side of town. Coming into our City it looks awful. We had a pretty City, and now it is being ruined. Bridge: My name is Martin Bridge, 611 South Iowa. My ques- tion is, what constitutes a green belt? Is it grass, is it shrubs? Is it specified what size? Are they hidden from view? I agree with the lady that just spoke. The town is beginning to look like a garbage dump. When you come into it, all you see is containers stacked up everywhere. Askins: In the ordinances .that have been passed is a 5 foot green belt on the highway 146, to be densely planted and continuously maintained as a visual screen using pine trees and shrubbery. Failure to keep the green belt would result in revocation of the permit. Now. we have had dis- cussion at the staff level of a general ordinance on con- tainer yards; one of the things that will be regulated would be a green belt, and to perhaps go into more detail. We have considered getting the advice of a landscape engineer or somebody with some expertise in this matter, and perhaps better define a green belt. Mrs. George Sharp: We have a container yard on East Main, and they don't have a green belt there. Their fence is falling down; it looks terrible. I think we have enough containers in La Porte. Meza: Yes, m'aam, the container yard came into La Porte before we passed this ordinance, and that is the reason the attorney and the staff are working on a green belt ordinance, so that we can enforce a green belt around our existing container yards.