Noise ordinance strips residential neighbors of their rights

In Manatee County’s desire to stop all citizens’ noise complaints, they took input from various county agencies, then raised the decibel limit to a ridiculously high level of 72dBA-77dBC. Now, commercial property is allowed to produce noise equivalent to an upright vacuum and subject that noise, legally, onto their residential neighbors.

This is not in alignment with any of the neighboring counties, and is higher than Hillsborough County’s acceptable industrial “at all times limit” of 70dBA.

This change is not about “music” or “entertainment” because those distinctions would have special clauses within the ordinance. This is about regular residents having “a right to an environment free of excessive noise…and disturbances from low frequency noise.”

These changes were clearly made to shut down any complaint that a regular citizen could make concerning constant loud commercial and low frequency noise.

Whoever wrote and approved this increase in noise obviously has no acoustical engineering background, nor would it take one, to spot the hole that is now in the ordinance. Any “reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities” can see the error.

Obviously, those commissioners who approved the ordinance have never heard or been subjected to hours of loud constant noise coming from their commercial neighbors. Otherwise they would know that constant low frequency noise is unacceptable in the 50 to 60 decibel range, unacceptable when it is audible from 25 feet, and unacceptable when it is tonal in nature; all protections which were removed from the new ordinance.

Important changes were made after the public viewed Draft 1 of proposed changes at the workshop. After public comments were heard, Draft 2 stripped these same citizens of what few rights they had left.

Manatee County, exactly where is the “adequate provision …for the abatement of unnecessary sound” because we can’t find it?

This story was originally published September 7, 2017 at 2:28 PM with the headline "Noise ordinance strips residential neighbors of their rights."