The effort to restrict and even ban outright the open burning of yard waste within the city limits of Perry has been ongoing for at least 10 years, and the issue will again be discussed at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Perry City Council.
Until October 2015, Perry residents could burn leaves in their yards between April 1 and June 1 and between Oct. 1 and Thanksgiving near the end of November. Then the city council moved to ban spring burning altogether starting in 2016 and to limit it in the fall to the three weeks prior to Thanksgiving.
The 2015 compromise, which banned spring burning but kept the reduced fall allowance, was supported by all the council members — Dr. Randy McCaulley, Chuck Schott, Phillip Stone and Barb Wolling — except John Andorf, now the Perry mayor but a city council member in 2015. Andorf rejected the compromise measure in favor of an across-the-board ban of open burning.
According to the agenda for this Tuesday’s meeting, the mayor “requested that open burn be discussed for the fall 2023,” and a resolution “has been drafted off historical practices with the edition of a municipal infraction that was set per the fall 2022 resolution and has proposed dates for 2023 being from Oct. 31, 2023 till Nov. 19, 2023.”
Alternatives to open burning are available to city residents. Biweekly curbside collection of yard waste will be available until Dec. 6, and the Yard Waste Collection Site off of Ivy Place in south Perry is also open to residents for the disposal of yard waste.
I am for the ban except the city shouldn’t be burning the stuff either. There’s been a few times when the smoke from the city burn pile blanketed the whole community so badly that the visibility was less than a city block. I don’t care what other communities may or may not do as it has no bearing whatsoever on what is done here. I wish open burning was banned across the entire state as far as that goes anyway. Regardless, until the city can come up with a way to dispose of all the leaves and branches short of burning them, there is no point of a burning ban. The city burn pile just blows back here anyway. I don’t know what can be done with the branches, but the leaves from all over town can easily be turned into mulch instead of burning them all. If the city bans open burning, great. Then again, the city shouldn’t burn the stuff either.