Gilroy
– Auto shops, box factories and other businesses that bug
neighbors with noise could get slapped with fines under a proposed
city ordinance.
Gilroy – Auto shops, box factories and other businesses that bug neighbors with noise could get slapped with fines under a proposed city ordinance.
City council members will hold a study session Monday to discuss expanding the ordinance to include noise caps on commercial and industrial businesses. The regulation is now more than a year in the making and already includes noise limits on pool pumps, leaf blowers and other common sources of noise pollution from homes.
“To be quite honest, I’m still on the fence,” Councilman Russ Valiquette said about expanding the ordinance. “On the one hand, people have to be allowed to run their businesses and there’s a certain amount of noise that comes with that. … (The ordinance) shouldn’t stop people from doing business, but … there should be a time frame for the noise that’s reasonable.”
Only 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 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.
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 a 24-hour average of noise. In practice, the regulation would require a staff member to stand outside a business or home with a noise meter for up to a day recording noise levels.
“We’re going to try to handle this in a simplistic format,” City Planning Manager Bill Faus said. “The (language for residential noise) we have now is based on (measurements) at the property line, rather than trying to regulate noise at the source. The concern we have is what is the noise level as it crosses the property line … It makes it much more simple to understand and enforce.”
The property-line model was endorsed by councilmen last year during informal policy talks. 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 70-decibel noise level, as measured from the property line, equates roughly to the din of a loud restaurant or highway traffic.
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.
Mayor Al Pinheiro approached the residential noise regulation with “caution,” and he said he’s doing the same with businesses.
“We need to be sure that we don’t fix something that’s not broken,” he said. “Any time you have a transition between residential and commercial, that’s where you may have problems and we need to do our best to mitigate those.”
Once city council members have agreed on standards for commercial and industrial sites, they plan to vote on the combined package of regulations for homes and businesses.
