A few weeks ago on the Downtown Mall, there was an unusual performance: Jim Tolbert, the city’s director of Neighborhood Development Services, strummed an electric guitar hooked up to an amp in front of Snooky’s Pawnshop, with a couple of cops milling about. Had Tolbert, a known jam band fan, been pushed over the edge by rezonings and proffers to pursue his true calling to panhandle on the Mall? Was he perhaps inspired by a few rounds of the videogame “Guitar Hero”? Could he have transgressed against City Manager Gary O’Connell, who punished him with a form of public humiliation not unlike the stocks of yore?
 Floyd the banjo player probably won’t violate the proposed ordinance, but those busking with amps or drums very well might. |
As it turns out, none of those hypotheses are true. In fact, Tolbert was testing the volumes appropriate for a new city noise ordinance, slated for discussion at City Council’s next meeting on Monday, February 17.
“The new proposal provides for 24-7 regulation on the Mall,” says Tolbert. It would regulate volumes exceeding 75 decibels, a level loud enough to carry on a normal conversation 30′ away and which can be heard clearly at 125′, according to Tolbert.
While current ordinances protect the eardrums of those in residential neighborhoods, the city’s increasing amount of residential apartments stacked on retail space has nothing that regulates noise, except on the Mall. There, loud sounds can only violate after 12am Saturday and Sunday, or after 10pm the rest of the week.
The new ordinance means that those setting up a full electric band on the Mall at 3pm on a Friday could be setting up for a parlay with police. The singer-songwriter type with an acoustic, however, probably won’t violate the 75 decibels.
“We’ve been getting tons of complaints and the city attorney’s office finally helped us find one that can work,” Tolbert says.
It’s not just the Mall, however, that would have these restrictions imposed. The new ordinance would also apply to restaurants and bars. Outback Lodge, for instance, could be subject to violations for exceedingly loud performances that leak out into the neighborhood.
“With most of these [music venues], if they keep the doors closed, they don’t exceed,” Tolbert says. “What they do is open the doors up for fresh air.”
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