BURKET – Cleaning up properties in town was the main topic of discussion for the Burket Town Council Thursday.
Three properties in particular were discussed.
One property on Main Street already had one letter sent to the property owner. Council President Bill Rayburn checked out the property last year after complaints about the property. He said the building is in poor repair and unsightly. There is also no power to the building. Rayburn didn’t think the building was an immediate danger to the community. Their backyard fence was also overgrown by weeds and tree limbs, which are protruding into the alley.
The second property is on Walnut Street. Rayburn said the property owner had several violations sent to them. A mattress was removed from the property, but Rayburn said the property owner has yet to respond to the town about cleaning up the property.
The last property was on Center Street. The property owner had a shed torn down. When the owner attempted to burn the shed, she was told she couldn’t burn anything other than natural wood and had to haul the wood off the property instead of burning it. The wood from the shed was still in the yard.
Councilwomen Lena Ball and Debra Deniston said they thought all three property owners should get violation letters.
It was decided letters would be sent out to the owners of the Main Street and Walnut Street properties. Rayburn said he would talk to the property owner on Center Street before they did anything further with that property.
Ball also brought up putting something in a newsletter for town residents about cleaning up piles and taking in trash cans after trash pickup to help get residents to clean up properties.
Rayburn said he thought the town sent a newsletter out about two months ago. He also said he usually has better luck when he talks to people about things that need to be cleaned up or done on the resident’s property.
The council agreed to send out a newsletter in the spring and include information about what residents can and can not burn.
In other business, Clerk-Treasurer Katina Webb said the 2025 budget was sent in to the state after it was reapproved after some errors in December. She said she has not heard anything back from the state since about the town’s budget.
Rayburn said he thought Webb wouldn’t hear anything back from the state until the budget went through the process it needed to on the state side. He thought Webb would have heard something from the state at this point, though, and Rayburn asked Webb to reach out to someone about the budget.