After a lengthy discussion, including a presentation from Pinellas County Sheriff's Office Deputy Terrance Falahee, who is an expert on sound, the Safety Harbor City Commission on Monday declined to recommend changes to the city's noise ordinance and instead will wait to see whether an educational campaign with the city's downtown bar and restaurants owners and Pinellas County Sheriff's deputies will curtail a recent spike in noise complaints.
Commission did, however, instruct City Manager Matthew Spoor to draft an addition to the city's temporary use permit application that would give city staff clearer direction on rejecting future applications from establishments who violate the noise ordinance during a permitted event.
The meeting agenda backup material listed two recent events, an Oct. 1 concert during a temporay use permitted event at Harbor Bar that some residents said was too loud and included cursing, and back to back events at Coastal Cantina on March 16-17 in which residents said music continued past the mandated 11 p.m. cutoff time. In both cases, deputies visited the establishment but did not instruct the owners to turn down or off the music. A business does not need a temporary use permit in order to offer live music, unless it changes the footprint of the establishment, as, for example, expanding into the parking lot.
During Falahee's presentation, he explained various concepts involved in sound and noise and the challenges with determining whether there is a violation or not, but also firmly stated that Safety Harbor's noise ordinance can be clearly enforced as is and has a number of inclusions that he said were strong and suggested should not be changed.
The city's noise ordinance uses a standard popular in noise ordinances called "loud and raucous," which can be subjective depending on the deputy who responds, but Falahee also said that c ities that include a decibel level for sound almost always pair it with a "loud and raucous" or similar standard. Additionally, he said the county only has five calibrated decibel readers, with three of them stored in Dunedin. If a decibel standard was added to Safety Harbor's ordinance, responding officers would need to go get one of the deciblel readers in Dunedin before responding to the complaint. In response to a question from Commissioner Cliff Merz, Falahee said it would be possible for the City of Safety Harbor to invest in its own calibrated decibel readers and store them in the city in a place where deputies would have access to them.
A petition that was signed by nearly 45 residents and submitted to Commission before the meeting requested that Commission adopt elements of Dunedin's noise ordinance, including adding decibel limits and shutting down music at 10 p.m. rather than the current 11 p.m.
Pinellas County Sheriff's Deputy Eric Brown, one of Safety Harbor's community policing officers, told Commission that retraining of all deputies assigned to Safety Harbor is to begin on Thursday. Spoor told Commission that the offending businesses have been contacted and have said they will abide by the noise ordinance going forward.
Commission ultimately decided to see how the combination of new deputy training and education of businesses and residents goes before further consideration of changes to the noise ordinance. Spoor strongly encouraged residents to call the Sheriff's Office to report noise complaints, rather than only contacting him and City Commissioners, so he is able to follow up with deputies later.
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