City Council

Salem City Council Committee on Public Health, Safety and Environment. March 2nd, 2023 Purpose: the issue of noise pollution, particularly car stereo and motorcycle noise in any potential actions that may be taken to help mitigate the issue in Salem. Attendance: Councilors Watson-Felt, Councilors Merkle, Councilor Cohen, Councilor McLean, and then from the committee of the whole, we have Councilors Morcillo and Councilors Brzezinski Attendee: city solicitor, Beth Renard. We have our health agent, David Greenbaum, and we also have Lieutenant Tucker from the Salem Police Department, and Captain Burke Councilor Watson-Feldt: So, for starters, I want to remind folks who go back in our brains to the end of last summer and early fall when this conversation started. A request was brought forward to the Council through me as the Ward 2 Councilor from residents who are here with us tonight, actually, who raised this relatively serious concern, and they went even a step further. So, I will say that, you know, noise pollution complaints, as we all know, are ongoing across various parts of Salem, specifically in the downtown, ongoing sort of mostly in the warmer months, but also, obviously, year-round, given the traffic that we have passing through Salem. But this group of residents actually made a very specific request that we take this up and discuss it with the Council, and I'm of the mind that, generally, that's our job. So, I wanted to thank them for making that very specific request and bringing this to our attention. It has started a number of really constructive conversations behind the scenes, which I know we're going to talk a little bit more about tonight. But it also, I think, opened the opportunity for other residents to express their stories as well. So, I know we've got a couple of emails that came in about this, and I think it's probably going to be the start of an ongoing conversation that's really important to have. I think it’s; I want to speak about the timing a little bit. I think it was, you know, this was brought forward during the warmer months, but I think having this conversation now in the winter is actually a perfect time so that we can hopefully enact whatever we'd like to enact in time to give some relief to the residents when those windows open up again this spring. We'll see. I think that we all, anyone who has expressed or experienced noise pollution in their neighborhood knows that it can be jarring, it can be shocking, especially it can cause ongoing stress when the noise is just sustained over a duration of time. There's a lot of different kinds of noise that can cause this kind of distress to their quality of life. Specifically, tonight, we're talking about engines and music, stereos, but I do think that this is a broader conversation. I know historically there's been some difficulty with enforcing our noise ordinance in town because you have to kind of report it and get it addressed in real time because even just the change of 10 minutes can, you know, the noise has passed. And so, the behavior just continues. I'm looking forward to having a conversation tonight about different various ways we can, you know, communicate broadly to people who come to this town or who live here through some sort of public awareness campaign, as well as some potential legal action that we can take. Chair: to see how we could possibly fix this problem and what has been done in the past. And after talking to our city solicitor about what avenues we can take concerning mitigating noise violations in our city, you know, before I talk about that, I do believe that when it comes to noise, especially from engine stereos in the downtown, I completely understand the concern with our downtown residents. This is a quality-of-life issue. And after talking to Chief Miller about this, he did agree that whatever we can do to solve this, I think is a benefit and positive for everybody. I just really think it's difficult. And I do think it's going to take a lot more than creativity. So, with that, I just wanted to give a little background that this has been somewhat discussed in a different way or the creative way in how we enforce it. So about 11 years ago, Mayor Driscoll proposed a measure called the, I'm going to call it the red-light violation program or initiative. And this was, you know, it was a great idea. Basically, the idea of people running red lights, a camera will take a picture, then send you an infraction ticket in the mail. However, after speaking with our city solicitor, you know, under chapter 90, Massachusetts General Laws of Road Enforcement, this is a very difficult thing to do because how our general laws are written, and I will take note here from our city solicitor, is that it would take a special act from the legislature to actually make this big of a change. An officer has to be at the site of the offense to issue a citation. This is how it works in the Commonwealth. But nevertheless, 11 years ago, Salem did file for the special act, and it definitely died either in the, would be the House or the Senate. So, this is somewhat the same conversation. And I wanted to bring up that when we talk about getting creative with how we can enforce this, I understand that our police department, they, you know, this should be a priority, but health and safety also are priorities of our city. What cities have done, specifically Philadelphia, is they have an initiative. I talked to Councilor Marcus Sequoia, and he's the majority whip of the city of Philadelphia. They enacted in 2021 an ordinance, basically where you could have a camera attached to a decibel meter. And what this would do is sort of document and cite the motorist for either excessive pipe, excessive noise from a car stereo. And this is going to be implemented in the summer in the city of Philadelphia. I think these are creative ideas because it's about enforcement. And when you don't have, I mean, when we talk about car stereos and loud pipes, you're talking about, you have to catch someone in the act. And that's very difficult to do anywhere. So, with that, I thought that was a great idea, but I think our hands are tied with chapter 90, unless we were possibly looking to enact from the legislature as well, which I think we need to talk about. Salem is very unique. We had, last year, over a million tourists coming to our city. And I think people, you know, treat a place they're visiting a little differently, maybe with a little, not say less respect, but it's a little different. And I think our situation's unique, and we need to make sure we can do all we can to make sure that our residents have peace of mind when it comes to noise. C. Cohen: thank you, Councilor Watson-Feld for bringing this up. Ironically, just recently, I received a letter today from someone who lives on ropes about the noise from the car wash. And, but I've had a lot of recent and not so recent communication with people who live on Lafayette Street. And I found out recently that after Highland Ave, Lafayette Street is the most traveled street in Salem. And it's obviously very residential. And one of the conversations I had was that, yes, that's Jeff Cohen talking. If you live on Lafayette Street, you're going to be confronted with a lot of noise. It could be like 18 wheelers or, you know, refrigeration trucks or whatever. But believe it or not, if you, if these residents lived one block away, like on Summit Ave, the noise level is significantly less. So, I don't have an answer, I just wanted to mention that. I think the main corridors where there's residential can be very difficult because those are where people tend to have larger trucks or motorcycles or souped up, you know, scooters or whatever, and contribute to the noise. So, I just wanted to mention that. C. Watson-Felt: I guess my question really comes down to a couple of things for the health department. One is sort of how do you rate this as a relatively serious problem in the downtown equality of life issue from a health perspective? And then also, what do you think is, what have you seen be successful with regards to enforcement or how to manage this on an ongoing basis, if you're able to speak to that? David Greenbaum: So, it's clearly a problem. I agree with you in that respect. Unfortunately, from a health perspective, it's not something that we can enforce. We don't enforce these temporary noises like a car stereo or a motorcycle going by or things like that. We in the health department enforce the mass DEP air pollution regulation, which they talk about noise as air pollution, and that is stationary noises of sufficient sound or sufficient level and duration. So, Councilor Cohen mentioned the car wash. We got that same complaint today. We've actually been dealing with that complaint quite extensively, and somebody from my office did go to DEP, got a sound meter, and we're going to go out and take sound meter readings for that specifically. I mean, we've done it for other stationary type noises. Unfortunately, the noises that you're talking about really don't fall under our purview. They're more, I'm going to throw my police friends over here under the bus. It's really more disturbing the peace, and it falls under them. C. Watson-Felt: Can you speak at all about the effects of noise pollution over time on people from a quality-of-life perspective? Are you able to speak about that, the effects? David Greenbaum: I could say generally that it's stressful. I mean, I used to live in, I lived in Lynn for 10 years. I don't live there anymore, and part of the reason I don't live there anymore is because I lived on a busy street, and I could hear the fire trucks going by at all hours of the night, and having young children at the time, I didn't want that, so I moved to the country, and I know that's not an option for everybody, but that was my decision C. Watson-felt: I think it's fascinating that you mentioned the sort of sustained ongoing issue from a stationary perspective. Do you know of any major areas where that's a key issue in the sort of in the B5 or in the downtown area? David Greenbaum: Not off the top of my head. I mean, the closest one is that car wash, but we've dealt with other ones. Trying to think, we had another noise complaint not that long ago. It was Napa Auto Parts, the exhaust vent from that, and we worked to try and get that addressed. I know years ago, we dealt with the air conditioning unit over at the storage facility on the corner of Bridge and Boston Street, so we've dealt with a number of them over the years, and we try to address them. And just bear in mind that the DEP regulation says that for it to be a violation, it has to be 10 decibels over ambient. So, well, if it's nine and a half decibels, it's not a violation. It still may annoy somebody, but it's not a violation that we can address, so it has to reach that 10-decibel level for us to act. C Cohen: with our current noise ordinance and concerning enforcement from the police department, I guess how much of a priority is enforcement of noise concerning vehicles, stereos, you know, I know there's, you know, this is a, it is a priority, but however, I think other things concerning health and safety are also priorities. So, with that, you know, where do you all stand on this? Lieutenant Tucker, Captain Burke: Well, basically it's a priority unless something supersedes it in the moment, but. You know, it's something that we receive complaints on regularly that we respond to and deal with. You know, we can do some of our options are to do more selective enforcement of these types of things with the good weather coming, we can do just to let the officers know, pay more attention to be a little more proactive to some of these loud noises from vehicles and whatnot, to issue warnings or citations to try to curb the behavior. But also, we've gotten complaints, and we respond to those as they come in. So sometimes we get a complaint and the complaint itself might be a little bit unreasonable. If it's the afternoon and someone has their radio up a little bit and we go, we say, well, you know, a reasonable person wouldn't find this to be too loud. That's a rare case, but when we get there, we have to be the reasonable person and say, all right, this is too loud, given the time of day, the day of the week, all those different factors. So that's really the standard. It's not even a set decibel. We don't have a policy of measuring the noise because at 10 p.m., you might get a verbal warning, hey, keep everybody quiet, turn down your radio. At 2 a.m., at 3 a.m., all right, turn the radio off, everybody has to leave. So, it's very subjective. But again, back to reasonableness. With vehicles, they're mobile, so it tends to be a fleeting thing. So that's where we have to be a little more proactive. But sometimes a group will go down the willows and hang around and play with their stereos or drive around in circles, and we can go down and find that group and deal with them. - Emphasizing the necessity for police presence in areas known for frequent violations to deter noisy gatherings of vehicles. - Addressing the use of tactical caution by the police to avoid high-risk pursuits that could lead to accidents, highlighting the liability concerns. - Highlighting the importance of identification efforts in enforcement, such as tracking a violator through a scooter's license plate. - Acknowledging the phenomenon of riders feeling impunity and the challenge it poses to enforcement. - Exploring the enforcement strategies regarding noise pollution, differentiating between objective decibel measurement and subjective assessment. - Discussing the use of decibel meters primarily in static situations, like monitoring street performers during Halloween, and outlining the limitations in measuring mobile noise sources. - Distinguishing between different levels of noise disturbances and the application of a reasonableness standard in enforcement actions. Chair: I understand probably the will is going to be waiting for this in committee. I just want to put on the record that I think it's important that not only do we continue this discussion, but I think it's worthwhile to file a home rule petition for this type of technology. I think it's important. It's a quality-of-life issue, and it's absolutely worth a shot. And I move that we keep this in committee. Second. All right, seconded by Councilor Watson-Felt. Meeting is adjourned