ST. PETERS, Mo. – A St. Peters, Missouri, homeowner is set to take on the city again in his ongoing fight to plant sunflowers in his front yard.
Chris Bank lost in a local court, but claimed the deck was stacked against him. He’s now taking the matter to a higher authority.
“Well, I had a St. Peters HOA member that complained. I had a St. Peters prosecuting attorney, I had a St. Peters courthouse, and a St. Peters judge; I felt like the odds were kinda stacked against me,” he said.
Bank is taking things to St. Charles County Circuit Court for a jury trial to try to get the right to plant more sunflowers than the city says he can.
According to the city ordinance, more than half of a homeowner’s front lawn has to be grass. City leaders said Chris Bank’s lawn didn’t meet that threshold. The city just dropped the case the first time around. The second time around, a St. Peters court ruled in the city’s favor.
The city is gearing up for a resumption of the fight.
“Well, again, there’s a whole process when there’s a complaint and a person is found that they’re in violation of an ordinance,” city spokeswoman Lisa Bedian said. “Then that goes through the legal system, so that’s where it is, and we’ll just be standing by to see how that all turns out. There’s an ordinance and he has violated it. The judge has made that ruling and now it just continues through the legal system.”
Now a higher judge will make the call in the battle of the sunflowers in St. Peters.
