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City Council agrees to look at strict limits on electric fences

Old Seminole Heights The barriers are unattractive and present the wrong image of the neighborhood, some residents say.

By Michael Canning
Published November 3, 2006

Susan Long feared that electric fences would go up where she and her neighbors worked to have barbed wire taken down. Now it looks as if the City Council will prevent that from happening.

Long and other members of the Old Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association attended a hearing Oct. 26 to ask council members not to allow Sentry Security Systems of Columbia, S.C., to install electric fences that shock on contact. The residents feared a series of electric fences would go up along Florida and Nebraska avenues, where they recently helped clear illegal barbed wire fencing.

Council members responded by proposing to allow the installation of electric fences only under certain conditions, including only in areas zoned industrial. That precludes properties along Florida and Nebraska in Seminole Heights.

City zoning manager Gloria Moreda said her department will draft changes to the law and present them to the council Jan. 11.

Long and other neighborhood association members recently patrolled Florida and Nebraska for properties with barbed wire on their fences, which is illegal. Long said they reported 44 properties to city code enforcement officials.

A few weeks ago Long caught wind of Sentry Security Systems' petition for the electric fences.

"My perception is some of the businesses that were required to take down their barbed wire may see (electric fences) as a good alternative," Long said.

The association's opposition to the electric fences is mostly visual, she said.

"It kind of looks like a prison farm. We're trying to improve the aesthetics, not make them worse. It also lends the perception that this is a terrible place. I think it's a move in the wrong direction."

Randy Mullis of Sentry Security Systems said, aesthetically, he doesn't see electric fences as any worse than chain-link fences.

"I don't think it would be any worse than every place having guard dogs or three guards posted. And it's a whole lot more economical and a whole lot more effective."

Moreda said the City Council's proposed conditions would allow electric fences on industrially zoned property provided the fence is no higher than 10 feet, does not exceed 12 volts, is completely surrounded by a nonelectric fence that is at least 6 inches from the electric fence, and has warning signs every 60 feet.

The electric fence's power box must be accessible to police and fire departments, Moreda said.

Long said she is mostly satisfied with the City Council's decision.

"Not my first choice," she said, "but it's a whole heck of a lot better than what was proposed."

[Last modified November 2, 2006, 11:21:16]