City aims for quiet nights

The Shelton City Council on Tuesday gave preliminary approval to new and amended noise ordinances that would outlaw repetitive squealing tires, revving car engines, continuous noise from pets and off-hours construction.

The council can make the new noise laws and amendments official by granting final approval at its March 1 meeting.

The city's current noise

ordinances were adopted in 2006. The council discussed the proposed additions and changes Nov. 23 at a study session.

The laws are aimed at decreasing noise in residential areas between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. The noise must be

"plainly audible" across a property line, or 50 feet from the source, whichever is less, to be considered an offense.

Following a complaint for the first offense, the violator would receive an oral or written warning from law enforcement. A second offense would be a civil infraction with a fine of $125. For a third offense, the violator would be guilty of a misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of 90 days in jail or a fine of $1,000, or both.

If the council passes the ordinances on March 1, they will go in effect on March 6.

City Manager Jeff Niten said city staff used suggestions by council members to make sure city-approved special events - such as Forest Festival and fireworks - are not affected by the ordinances.

City staff also followed council advice to make the penalty structure "progressive." The first proposal called for a warning for the first offense, and then a $1,000 fine if the noise persists.

At the work session Nov. 23, Niten said enforcement would be "complaint driven."

"These are not something where code officers are going to go looking for these types of things," he said. "It's intended as a tool for us to address these issues when we receive a complaint from a member of the public."

He added, "The central theme of all these efforts is to streamline and make things more simple, make things less wordy, less verbose, and to boil it down to what we're actually trying to get at, so everyone can understand it as they read it."

At the Nov. 23 work session, Shelton Police Chief Carole Beason said that with the current ordinance, officers will tell residents to turn down the volume, but after they leave, the noise resumes.

"The way it's written now, we can't really do a lot about it," she said.

In the proposed ordinance, "one of the key words in there are 'repetitious' and 'continuous,' " the chief said. "So this isn't the person who starts their vehicle, they're loud, and then they drive off. This is the time a neighbor has called into their neighbor and said, 'Hey, you're making a lot of noise, can you knock it off during these hours,' and they've basically said, 'No, we're not going to do it.' "