Islands staying in Abbeville for now

Islands are fine for Jimmy Buffett, just not so much for the City of Abbeville.
The city has multiple unincorporated areas of land that are surrounded on each side by city limits.
“They are basically three or four islands in the city,” Abbeville Mayor Mark Piazza said.
House Bill No. 733, authored by Rep. Bob Hensgens, would have connected those pieces of property in question to the rest of the city by allowing the Abbeville City Council by vote to annex properties “without obtaining the request or approval of the residents and property owners of the area if the area to be annexed is an unincorporated area of less than five acres that exists completely within the external boundaries of the city of Abbeville.” A public hearing would have preceded such a vote by the council.
However, the bill failed to gain enough momentum during this recent Legislative Session to become official.
“The bill passed the House (of Representatives),” Piazza said. “It was then rejected by the Senate and sent back to committee for amendments.
‘We could not come to an agreement on the amendments in time to bring it back to the Senate before the deadline.”
The session ended on June 11. Piazza said the city plans to request similar legislation during next year’s session, which begins on March 14, 2016.
“We just ran out of time this year,” Piazza said. “We do plan on bringing it back up again next year, with some language that we can all live with.”
Part of the issue with this bill hinged on property being brought into the city without a public vote.
“From what we understand,” Piazza said, “the Senate sent the bill back for amendments because Gov. (Bobby) Jindal has said he would not sign any bill to expropriate property without a public vote.”
Piazza said as far as he can tell, this is not an issue that affects many areas around the state.
“I have talked to a lot of mayors and nobody seems to have this issue,” Piazza said. “Everybody else seems to have their corporate limits pretty uniformed.”
From the city’s prospective, the heart of the matter is uniformity.
“We want everyone within the corporate limits of Abbeville to be compelled to comply with local ordinances,” Piazza said. “There are public safety issues concerning law enforcement and jurisdiction.
“The main issue is that everyone comply with the same set of ordinances.”