By Richard Meek
Contributing Writer

LAPLACE – St. John the Baptist Parish’s Code Enforcement Office will soon be operating with a full staff, including four investigative officers, two secretaries and one supervisor.
Currently the parish is operating with three officers but is in the process of hiring a fourth, Director of Planning and Zoning Angelic Sutherland said. All of the officers are part time.
Sutherland said the office operates under a work order system, similar to the system used by the Public Works Department. She said once a complaint has been either called in or logged through a work order, an officer is assigned the case and completes the investigation.
“They come back to the office and write reports on all of the inspections they perform,” she said. “As well as when they are on their way to investigate a work order complaint they may observe something that was not called in, so they have to add that to their list as well.”
Sutherland added that the Code Enforcement Office has its own procedural tracking system, and violators are tracked by how much time that person is allowed to bring an infraction within code. But she noted that occasionally some violations may “slip through the cracks. If the staff doesn’t monitor the work order system, then things get missed.”
Sutherland did say the office has inhered work orders that have been open for several years, dating prior to the current administration. She said the office is in the process of reviewing those and assigning officers to follow up on those cases so they can either close the file or conduct additional investigative work.