Noise from numerous locations in city will face tougher
regulations under new ordinance
Gilroy – Auto body shops, box factories, restaurants and other businesses that fill the air with a chorus of noise could face tougher regulation under a proposed ordinance.
The draft noise ordinance, expected to undergo a final city council vote in November, sets limits for average noise levels over periods of one, five and 15 minutes, as well as average noise levels during the day and night. The noise maximums follow a simple logic: The louder the noise, the shorter the time a business can produce it.
Violators face a range of enforcement action, from a basic letter of warning to fines of $100 per day or more in the most persistent cases of noise pollution.
“What we’re doing is trying to come up with something a bit more detailed than the general numbers in the General Plan,” City Planner Cydney Casper said, referring to the city’s broad guidelines for land use regulation. “We’re coming up with more detailed numbers that actually allow us to go out and enforce it easier.”
Current regulations are virtually unenforceable, city staff members say, because they link violations to 24-hour averages.
“We didn’t have the tools to enforce,” said Gilroy Code Enforcement Officer Scott Barron, explaining that the city in most cases is forced into the role of mediator. “We usually try to get them to get along, but (the regulation) is nothing that has any teeth in it.”
Only a handful of complaints about businesses roll in each year, Barron said. Most come from neighbors of the industrial corridor along Alexander Street and the First Street shopping corridor. In one case, an auto body shop sent neighboring businesses into an uproar when it decided to test dune buggies. In another case, a First Street restaurant’s refrigeration system was driving nearby homeowners crazy.
Robert Spangler and his family said the city did nothing when he complained about more than a year ago about noise coming from the Bay Sheet box company at the southern tip of Alexander Street. Windy days are the worst, Spangler said, explaining how noise reaches his Garden Court home after passing across railroad tracks, Monterey Street, and an open field just south of Platinum Theaters.
‘It would be like if you’re next to an airport,” Spangler said. “It’s like listening to an F-16 on the tarmac revving it’s engines up. I can’t believe there are not more complaints from more residents.”
Bay Sheets Manager Craig Fisher declined to comment, saying he did not know enough about the noise complaints or the city’s draft regulations.
For his part, Spangler had given up hope that his family’s concerns would be addressed until he learned city council was drafting a noise ordinance.
In recent months, the governing body has devoted considerable energy to hashing out an ordinance to regulate noise in residential neighborhoods. During a full day of informal policy talks Friday, council members agreed to set time limits on use of leaf blowers and other “non-fixed” sources of pollution. They also set a 70 decibel threshold for fixed sources of pollution such as air conditioners and pool pumps, but chose to apply the regulation only to new homes and people looking to upgrade their systems. The noise level, as measured from the property line, equates roughly to the din of a loud restaurant or highway traffic.
Commercial and industrial noise pollution had fallen off the council’s radar as it tackled residential noise. Mayor Al Pinheiro was surprised to learn that city staff members plan to include tougher regulation of commercial and industrial noise polluters as part of the ordinance governing homes. He said it’s too early to say how he would vote on tougher standards for businesses.
“Number one, I’m hoping that businesses that put out such noises are in an industrial area that tolerates more noise than in a residential area,” Pinheiro said. “The fine line is where they kinda of meet each other. I guess I’d have to see what they bring to us. I really never focused in on that. We got so tangled up on this whole residential ordinance there wasn’t much attention paid to anything else.”
Council is expected to vote on the noise ordinance Nov. 20 at City Hall, 7351 Rosanna St.
