Hearing on ordinance that sets decibel limits scheduled
The Bethlehem Town Board will be listening to residents on Wednesday, Dec. 9, when a public hearing will be held on a proposed noise abatement and containment ordinance that would make it a punishable offense to be too noisy during certain hours.
The drafted law, which is available for review on the town’s Web site, would prohibit unreasonable noise between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., seven days a week.
Unreasonable noise is defined as `any noise which either annoys, disturbs, injures or endangers the comfort, repose, health, peace, safety or welfare of a reasonable person of normal sensibilities,` and is further defined as noise in excess of 75 decibels when measured from the property line of the offender, or from 20 feet away if the noise is occurring on a street.
Specifically mentioned in the law are motor vehicles (including the `spinning and squealing of tires` and revving of engines), power tools, construction noise, amplification devices (televisions, radios, musical instruments, etc.) and companion animals.
`No person shall allow a companion animal to engage in habitual barking, crying, or whining, and consistently disturb the comfort or repose of any person other than the owner of the companion animal,` the proposed law reads.
According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, sounds at 70 decibels are equivalent to busy traffic or a vacuum cleaner, and levels of 80 decibels are equivalent to a busy street or alarm clock. Sounds in excess of 80 decibels are considered potentially dangerous to one’s hearing.
A committee was formed in 2007 to study the possibility of a noise ordinance. The public demand for such a law has been strong, according to Supervisor Jack Cunningham.
`When I first came into office, I was getting a lot of complaints from people about noise,` he said.
`We get a fair number of noise complaints,` said Deputy Chief Timothy Beebe of the Bethlehem Police Department, who sat on the committee.
Without a law or ordinance, though, police can’t do much unless the issue is disturbing and frequent enough to be considered criminal harassment.
`Other than politely asking them to turn it down, at this point there’s a not a lot we can do,` Beebe continued.
The committee did not recommend a decibel limit to the town, but Cunningham noted that the more successful ordinances do include one. He noted that all parts of the law, including the decibel ceiling, could be amended if it did not work out.
`I don’t want government to be too heavy handed here, I want to create something as a true tool of enforcement where enforcement is really needed,` Cunningham said. `We constructed it [the ordinance] in a way that it doesn’t really prevent anyone from doing their normal activities.`
Councilman Sam Messina, who chaired the eight-member committee, said the group had originally looked at recommending a decibel level but decided not to suggest one.
`Eighteen of the 20 surrounding communities have noise ordinances,` he said. `They vary greatly in terms of their comprehensiveness and the approach used by the municipalities.`
There are various exceptions provided by the drafted law, including government operations, firearms, aircraft, routine or emergency maintenance and construction, disaster recovery activity and manufacturing activities.
`Reasonable agricultural related noise` in an agricultural district or zone and activities in accordance with the New York State Right to Farm Law would also be exempt from the provisions of the law.
Messina wondered what sort of agricultural noise would be `reasonable.`
`Whenever you use a modifier like reasonable, it gets you to the point of, well, what do you define as reasonable?` he said.
He noted that since noise complaints tend to come along with fair weather and not in the winter, there will be plenty of time to make amendments to the law depending on what the public has to say Wednesday. The board could vote to adopt it immediately following the public hearing, however, if it feels no amendments are needed.
If passed, police and the building department will enforce the law using decibel meters. The devices are not expensive, Cunningham said.
Under the proposed law, convicted violators, would be subjected to a fine of $50 to $250 for the first offense; $100 to $250 and/or up to 10 days imprisonment for the second offense; and a fine of not less than $250 and/or up to 15 days imprisonment for the third offense and subsequent offenses.
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