Gilroy
– A noise ordinance nearly a year in the making will face
another round of revisions, city councilmen said this week.
Gilroy – A noise ordinance nearly a year in the making will face another round of revisions, city councilmen said this week.
At a Monday study session, Gilroy’s elected officials said they need more details before they can push forward on a vote to limit noise generated from businesses.
The draft ordinance would limit sound from power tools, “fixed” machines, and other equipment to 70 decibels – a noise equivalent to the din of a loud restaurant – as measured from the property line of a disgruntled homeowner. The ordinance would allow the city to more easily issue citations and fines by capping the allowable duration of such noises at an average of 10 minutes.
But a number of questions remain unanswered, said City Councilman Craig Gartman, who has serious reservations about the law.
“Is the city prepared to buy every police officer with a sound meter?” he said. “This stems from one neighbor not being able to get along with another neighbor out of almost 50,000 people,” Gartman said. “Is that a justifiable reason to suddenly put controls on everyone? I believe we need to have neighbors work with one another to solve their problems, instead of legislating behaviors.”
The squabble between neighbors on Hacienda Drive involved complaints about excessively loud pool pumps. That dispute resolved itself recently, Gartman said, when the neighbors who were complaining about the noise sold their home.
Though the dispute drew greater attention to the noise issue, the Hacienda Drive situation has not been the only source of noise-related friction. A handful of complaints about businesses roll in each year, according to Gilroy Code Enforcement Officer Scott Barron. Most come from neighbors of the industrial corridor along Alexander Street and the First Street shopping corridor. In such situations, city staff have been relegated to the role of mediators. Current noise regulations are virtually unenforceable, Barron and other city officials have said, because they require a violation to be based on an 24-hour average of noise. The regulation would require a staff member to stand outside a business or home with a noise meter for up to a day.
The latest draft of the regulation would ban the use of yard equipment and power tools produced at homes between 10pm and 7am; “fixed sources” of noise pollution such as air conditioners and pool pumps would be capped at 70 decibels during those hours. The regulations would only apply to newly installed equipment.
Officials will enforce similar constraints on the commercial and industrial side, except that businesses will only face citations or fines if they break the threshold of the 10-minute average.
“I think we should go with it and see how it rides out,” Councilman Russ Valiquette said. “I think it can be helpful.”
