Public Mess — By Tommy Purser

I’ve had on my mind lately the mess plaguing Tallahassee Missionary Baptist Church. In case you don’t remember, church goers there have to endure unsightly and, possibly hazardous, trash dumping around their church. A group of church members attended a recent county commission meeting to ask for some relief from the situation. But not much has been done.
While there’s little the commissioners can do, they certainly can take steps to prevent more unsightly, unsafe dumping to occur in the future.
While reading The True Citizen, a weekly newspaper covering Burke County in east Georgia, I read with interest plans the commissioners there have to fight such problems.
Proposed changes to a county ordinance would “prohibit stockpiling litter, refuse, junk, trash and/or waste, including junk vehicles on private property and public right of ways.”
Persons found to be in violation of the solid waste ordinance would have 15 days to produce a plan of corrective action and be responsible for cleanup. Failure to do so could result in a fine not to exceed $1,000 and/or incarceration of up to 60 days.
For decades I’ve lamented the fact our commission has no county-wide zoning nor local building codes. The county has no land use ordinance to provide for orderly growth. Anyone can create growth problems and there is nothing anyone can do to stop such activities.
When someone puts a chicken house, a pig sty or a trash dump next to the commissioners’ homes, maybe they’ll wake up, smell the problems and do something.
We’ll see.