City Commission: A Big Noise About Noise
The first great sound at last week’s city commission meting at Old City Hall was a Buddhist mantra. It concluded the opening invocation by Ellen Booth Church of the Key West Tara Mandala Sangha in which she urged mayor and commissioners to “set an intention for this year. Feel your place here. Feel the height of this ceiling. Feel the presence of your neighbor.”
The next big noise came during the first reading of an ordinance put forward by Commissioner Jimmy Weekley called, somewhat eerily, “Sound Control.” It proposed to “clarify unreasonable noise prohibitions, citation procedure and penalties, and repeal inconsistent provisions.”
What it really did was unleash a noisy, gale-force wind of experience and expertise that left the whole bag deflated and crumpled upon the ground for passersby — that’s you dear reader — to stare at in wonder.
Our Southernmost City has had almost 40 years of this kind of cyclone going pfft, ever since the days when bars were instructed simply to shutter their windows if neighbors couldn’t stand the music.
This time around, sound control seems to have extended its reach. The first speakers from the audience brought up issues probably not heard in this context before.
Judy Martinez described how she’d had to rent a hotel room to escape the noise in her neighborhood that happened to include the sounds of nighttime drug dealing from automobiles (applause at this).
John Martini described what it was like to live next door to a church that, for the past couple of years, has vented famplified music and voices so loud that he deems them a health hazard to immediate neighborhood. (Churches are exempt from any sound ordinance, by the way.)
Erika Biddle raised the issue of the maddening leaf blower. Where she lives, she told the commission, it makes no sense to create all that noise just to blast leaf waste and associated polluting rubbish such as cigarette butts from the cemetery and into her yard. A silent wind could do all that for free. “The most terrible invention ever” she called leaf blowers, “and the city is the worst offender. Why not use a vacuum instead?”
Echoed Christine Russell: “My neighbor dries his car and cleans out its interior with a leaf blower and now he’s bought another for his mother!”
John Vagnoni of the Green Parrot declared that, throughout all its many years of dispensing refreshment and hosting live music on Whitehead Street, his bar has received not a single citation for sound violation. He commended the commission for its attention to quality-of-life issues and respects the code officers (although that’s not always been the case over the past 40 years). It’s just that he “hates to be dependent on one person’s decision and one single meter reading to keep on the right side of any law.”
Joe Walsh, proprietor of a number of entertainment establishments in the new Key West, told commissioners that the 75-decibel limit imposed by the city’s proposed sound-control ordnance, would “eliminate a number of businesses in town.” Fifty-five decibels, he explained, “is the sound I’m making by speaking to you now.”
He urged the commissioners not to “make a crime out of normal activity,” which received applause from the crowded hall. “Don’t push the panic button and close down every establishment in Key West just because a few bars don’t comply.”
Commissioner Mark Rossi, a multiple-bar owner himself, agreed with Walsh that “only a few bad apples” make sound-control a problem, then stretched the metaphor to warn fellow commissioners against being too restrictive by “throwing a blanket over everything.”
Architect Michael Ingram, who owns Aqua nightclub on Duval, said that today’s architects know all about air compressors and air conditioners and how to suppress and shield noise, then suggested that the only thing Key West really needed now is “an ordinance that creates good neighbors.”
Said Weekley in riposte: “Better sleep, better neighbors?”
Responded Ingram: “Age breeds intolerance?”
Which left the real question. What can we do?
Excepting the absent commissioners Clayton Lopez and Billy Wardlow, all of those on the dais including Commissioners Teri Johnston, Tony Yaniz and Mayor Craig Cates debated the options at length and with rigor. The only real distance reached was regarding the matter of the sound meters themselves.
These days apparently, in most other entertainment destinations in the nation, the meter that measures what a level called the A scale (the one that most often reads 75 decibels in ambient street sound) has been displaced by meters that read the C scale (no relation to the scale of C in music) that captures the throb of the bass. That’s the one that causes the most grief, in motorcycles, cars and bars.
The final opinion on the whole prickly matter on Tuesday surly goes to Jim Doran, a business proprietor on Duval Street for 29 years. “It’s a matter of respect,” he told the commissioners and the crowd. “Ninety-nine percent of problems can be solved. I run a successful business because I listen to my neighbors.”
But no decision was reached last week on account of the missing commissioners. After lengthy discussions with the city attorney, Shawn Smith, Weekley agreed to postpone any first reading of his proposed ordinance until a later date.
Also at Tuesday night’s meeting, City Manager Bb Vitas introduced us to the city’s new director of engineering. Jim Bouquet (pronounced Bow-kay”) is a graduate of Iowa State who spent four years in the Navy and 30 years in civil and environmental and engineering. He and his wife now live on Big Pine Key. Doug Bradshaw, his predecessor, has moved to Marine Services.
And before the meeting, Konk Life had a word with assistant manager Mark Finigan, who’s moving on from City Hall. What’ll he be up to next? “I’m telling friends that I’m joining the NASA program on the effects of aging.” Actually, he added, “I’m going to stay local.”
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