St. Tammany Parish President Mike Cooper surprised residents with a rare move.
On Monday, he exercised his power to veto two controversial ordinances passed by parish council during last week’s regular meeting.
In a statement written on his social media platform, Cooper said, “I have closely monitored the rezoning submissions of the Isadora and Esperanza developments since they first came before the Zoning Commission in May. Throughout this process, I have reviewed the proposals, listened to the concerns of residents, and carefully considered the potential impacts these developments could have on our community. As parish president, I will exercise my right to VETO the recent council decisions that would have paved the way for approximately 800 new homes near LA1077 and Ronald Reagan Highway (U.S.190) in the Goodbee area.”
After dozens of residents spoke against the rezoning effort at Thursday’s meeting, council was split, but the yeas outweighed the nays for both ordinances.
The developer H1 Associates, who declined to comment about the president’s latest action, wanted to rezone that portion of the Goodbee area to make it a Subdivision Residential District as opposed to the Rural Residential District it’s currently zoned for.
“I think in general, people move here because they don’t want that. They want a rural parish.” Councilman David Cougle said.
Cougle is one of six council members who voted against these ordinances.
“We are interested in smart growth, not like hundreds and hundreds of homes.” Cougle said.
“I live there because I love the five-acre minimums, the estate-level living and all that. We don’t want these big-density subdivisions,” one neighbor said during the council meeting.
In one of the proposals, which is called the Esperanza development, H1 Associates proposed to change the five-acre minimum lot size to 7,500 square feet. That would change the net density of the 31.51 acres of land from 4 lots to 128 lots.
Isadora development is a larger project; H1 Associates requested to decrease the R-1 five-acre lot minimum to 11k square feet and the R-2 three-acre lot minimum to 7,500 square feet. That would change the net density of R-1 from 29 lots to 403 lots and R-2 from 11 lots to 482 lots.
Essentially, this means that both of these projects would allow the developer to build more homes on less land, making the area more suburban.
Residents voiced concerns of congestion, overcrowded schools and flooding.
Matthew Allen, the founder of Northshore Riverwatch, told WDSU the area is very prone to flooding.
“Our biggest concern is putting that much fill for houses, and fill will tend to block the flow of the water trying to get to Lake Pontchartrain and send it to other properties and back it up into other neighborhoods,” Allen said.
WDSU reached out to council members who were in favor of the ordinance; however, no one was able to respond.
Council chair Cheryl Tanner told WDSU they are still waiting for President Cooper’s veto paperwork.
His office said it is going through the legal channels, and he will sign it and send it over to council.
Council does have the right to override the president’s veto, but they will need 10 council members to support it.
According to Tanner, there are no plans to call a special meeting on this.
READ MORE:President Mike Cooper’s latest veto halts rezoning efforts to build hundreds of new homes
