The Independence City Council completed the first reading of a revised ordinance regulating controlled burns in the city limits at their meeting Monday night.
A similar ordinance proposal had already come before the city in February, but following discussion, the council decided to revise the ordinance before voting on it.
The ordinance is aimed not at recreational fires, such as those in a backyard fire pit, but rather at open burns performed by businesses and developers. The ordinance resembles fire regulations at the state level.
“This does not affect your fire pits,” said Council Member Carol Franzen.
“It’s generally when they’re clearing land for development,” Independence Mayor Chris Reinersman said at the February meeting. “They start burning, and it burns, and burns, and ashes fly, and people are coming out in the morning, and their cars are covered in ash, and so on.”
The newest version of the ordinance would establish the following regulations:
- Burns could only be performed during certain times of the year and certain times of the day
- It would be illegal to burn tires, cars, appliances, garbage and other man-made scrap and debris
- Burns can only encompass two contiguous acres of land at a time
- The people performing the burns must be at least 18
- Burners must have a device on hand to communicate with the fire department and emergency services
- Burners must have a large piece of earth-moving equipment laden with dirt to extinguish the fire if necessary
- Burners must have a proper insurance and proof of insurance
- Burn piles can only have a maximum diameter of 30 feet and a maximum height of 15 feet
- Burn piles must have blowers on them
- Open burns cannot take place within 25 feet of other combustible materials or within 50 feet of neighboring houses to mitigate the spread of smoke and ash.
Anyone who violates this policy would be subject to up to a $100 fine.
Recreational fires on private property would still be allowed, although they would be limited to fires with a maximum height of five feet and a maximum diameter of five feet. Other forms of burning are allowed under certain conditions as well.
Independence Police Chief Brian Ferayorni said that the city currently lacks any way to enforce fires that get out of hand. Although the fire department can still extinguish a fire if they feel it’s become dangerous, there was no other established mechanism for enforcement of nuisance fires.
“So essentially what happened was we kept getting complaints about the builders in certain areas building fires too close to houses and causing damage to the house and cars and things like that,” Ferayorni said.
Despite the complaints, Ferayorni said, “there was no ordinances that were enforceable in our books.”
Ferayorni added that the police would not be trolling around looking for offenders if the ordinance passed. Instead, it would be enforced on a complaint basis.
Council Member Dave Shafer expressed some concern that perhaps the ordinance could end up being too strict, given that the complaints seemed to stem from only a handful of developers.
“We’re blanketing the city with something that’s only being caused by four or five people,” Shafer said.
In addition, The Building Industry Association of Northern Kentucky had written a letter to the mayor and council in early March, arguing that such an ordinance would likely add more cost to home builders, whom the association viewed as burdened with unnecessary regulations already.
“Our concerns are that this will continue to add to the cost of providing new homes for homebuyers in the city of Independence,” said association Executive Vice President Brian Miller in the letter. “As we have expressed on multiple occasions before the City Council our industry is regulated into unaffordability as a cumulative result of small price increases, which will be incurred by actions such as this.”
A representative from the association did not attend Monday’s meeting.
Other city council members attempted to assuage Shafer’s concerns by pointing out the ordinance wouldn’t necessarily prevent developers from engaging in large burns, but it would instead grant the city a way of mitigating the fires if they became a nuisance to residents.
Council Member Chris Vogelpohl, who worked as a firefighter and a paramedic for 20 years, said that the regulations are very similar to recommendations given by The National Fire Protection Association, a legacy nonprofit that aims to establish various protection measures for firefighters in the field.
The Independence City Council will perform a second reading and cast a vote on the ordinance at their meeting on on Monday, May 6, at the Independence City Building. The meeting begins at 7 p.m.