Tony Allers knew something had to be done.

The director of Codes and Planning for the city of Gallatin went into motion to begin the development of a fencing ordinance. The Gallatin City Council has alerady passed the ordinance on first reading at a recent council meeting.

The ordinance does not replace a previous ordinance, Allers reminds everyone, but sets new rules and regulations in place.

“Before the start of this discussion concerning fences and objects in the yard, you could put up basically whatever you wanted as long as it was no higher than six foot,” Allers explained.

“You could build a fence out of anything, garage doors even. Part of your fence could be six foot tall, part of it could be five foot and another part could be three foot. But that is detrimental to the neighborhood and detrimental to the property values in the city in general.

“And what the planning commission did was to start back in May or June reviewing fence ordinances, fence requirements and home owners association requirements,” Allers added. “Not every area is protected by a homeowners association and every association’s covenants have expiration dates, so if they’re not renewed by the homeowners association, then those rules go away, too.”

The Planning Commission, Allers said, put together a pretty comprehensive ordinance and has gone through all the stages. He said it went through the first reading of the city council and will be put up for a public hearing soon before a second reading is required.

“We will get input from the public and go from there,” Allers commented. “This really isn’t changing something because there wasn’t an ordinance put in place before now. What we’re doing is actually putting an ordinance in place.”

Allers said the new ordinance involves a lot of common sense and gives the homeowners a lot of freedom.

“The ordinance says fences can be made out of any customary materials, wood, chain link, decorative metal, brick, stone. They can’t be put together out of material like junk material, garage doors, etc,” Allers said. “It is all pretty much common sense, but if you don’t put it down in writing, if it doesn’t say you can’t, then many people think you can. The city is saying you can’t do this.”

Allers said the ordinance has certain height requirements for the back, front and side yards on any property.

“Homeowners should know the fence can to be no higher than four foot in the front yard, and six foot on the sides and in the back,” Allers explained. “That is for safety reasons. You should be able to see if someone is trying to break in or something is happening at the house. Everyone wants privacy, but you do need visibility.”

Allers said the zoning administrator has the authority to approve driveway entry features if needed.

“For years in a lot of cities, planning departments are not planning departments, they’re reacting departments. We’re trying to not let that happen here. This is truly a planning measure,” Allers said. “We don’t have a problem right now, but let’s plan for it so that we don’t have to react to it later.”