FORTVILLE — Town council members discussed possible amendments when looking at the town’s current noise ordinance at the council meeting Monday night.
Tonya Davis, town council president, said the town’s current ordinance is “pretty vague” and had a few residents ask for the council to look at the ordinance and discuss possible changes. Davis brought to the meeting a document with some information with suggestions.
Patrick Bratton, Chief of Police in Fortville, said while he understands the intent of a noise ordinance and the regulations, he believes that setting a certain decibel level limit can be tough.
Bratton mentioned the neighboring town of McCordsville, and how they will receive many calls in one night due to noise levels. Per their noise ordinance, they have to go out and use measuring tape and a device that reads decibel levels to determine if it is in violation, which Bratton can be time consuming – sometimes 15 minutes just for one call.
“I personally would like to see that left out, but I do like the hours of the construction and the mowers and the power tools,” Bratton said. “You know, maybe just set a quiet hour, in my opinion.”
Bratton also said that there would be some exceptions, such as holidays that include fireworks – Memorial Day and Fourth of July – which the town has a separate firework ordinance.
The board also discussed offenses for those who violate the noise ordinance, suggesting that the first ordinance be a verbal warning before charging fines.
Vanessa Battaglia, town council member, said that she would want to further look into the times in which quiet hours are enforced.
Fred Fentz, town council member, agreed that their noise ordinance needs to be looked at and possibly amended but said that by not including numbers for decibel levels, that leaves a judgment call for officers to make when they are called out to a location.
Fentz said that can be difficult to do, especially for commercial areas where they have live music, because what may be loud to one people isn’t to another, again leaving a judgement call for someone to make.
After a brief discussion on the noise ordinance, the board decided that they would take what was mentioned at the meeting and go into further detail to bring an amendment for the noise ordinance at a later time.
