City council has muffled a proposal for a tougher excessive-noise bylaw, deciding to study the issue before setting out new rules or souped-up penalties.
Successes for Ald. John Mar’s bid to clamp down on annoyances such as blaring motorcycle or car engines seemed to have been trumpeted well in advance of Monday’s council meetings, with nine of 15 aldermen sponsoring the motion.
However, several other council members warned the city should tread cautiously and only do what was reasonable, rather than raise public expectations.
“We’re all anxious to have this addressed, but we need to know the implications around this,” Ald. Diane Colley-Urquhart said.
So instead of proposed bylaw revisions coming out sooner, council on Monday asked for a city report, due next spring, on what it could do with new decibel-measuring technologies within federal or provincial regulations.
“Nothing impedes progress like a search for perfection,” Ald. Bob Hawkesworth quipped.
The softening of the proposal frustrated Mar, whose ward includes the 17th Avenue S.W. strip that’s most notoriously rattled by cruising motorcycles and hotrods.
“Do we have reasonable expectations for quality of life this year?” said an exasperated Mar, referring to the heightened public demand for a crackdown on excessive noise.
He and other supporters of a tougher bylaw took pains to say they weren’t singling out motorcycles.
“It might be a Corvette driving down my street with its radio so loud I don’t even know if anyone in there has eardrums left,” Ald. Jim Stevenson said.
Mar had been warning of big punishments for noise violators. On his Twitter message feed, he suggested last weekend that fines be raised to $5,000 — similar to the penalties facing graffiti-spraying vandals.
Currently, the city’s community standards bylaw lays out a $100 maximum ticket for excessive noise.
Mayor Dave Bronconnier said he sympathized with people who wanted justice against unnecessary noisemakers, but worried about difficulties enforcing the rules.
“That is something that’s certainly not easy to do, given the demands on bylaw enforcement and creating the expectation that every noisy vehicle, noisy party, noisy siren is going to be resolved by the city bylaw,” he said, “because it won’t be.”
Ald. Druh Farrell noted Calgary can already learn a lot from Edmonton, which recently passed a noise bylaw. However, the provincial capital’s new rules focus on motorcycles, which Calgary is striving not to do.
jmarkusoff@theherald.canwest.com
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