Provo council office outlines draft noise ordinance changes; residents press on stadium exemptions

Michael Sanders, a policy analyst with the Provo City council office, told Neighborhood District 1 on Wednesday that staff are proposing changes to the city’s noise ordinance intended to simplify enforcement and tailor limits to local conditions. "We tabulated five years of police call data and found out that there were a little under 800 noise complaints a year, or about 64 a month," he said, adding that District 5 accounted for 48% of calls and District 1 accounted for about 6% in the citywide tally.

Staff proposed three enforcement-side changes: consolidate multiple noise-determination tables into a shorter set of rules so officers can more quickly assess violations; introduce ambient-noise–based measurements to assess violations relative to local background levels; and remove a detailed, procedural enforcement section from the code to give police more flexibility in how they measure noise for prosecution. Sanders said the existing exemptions would be maintained for emergency vehicles, certain temporary events and fireworks but that the council had asked staff to draft language exempting athletic competitions at stadiums in some form.

The stadium exemption drew the sharpest reaction from residents. A neighborhood resident said the proposed exemptions are problematic: "It looks like, well, if it's a multibillion dollar sport athletic corporation like BYU, we'll leave them alone," the resident said, adding later, "It looks like you're in collusion with the source of the noise, excessive noise." Sanders responded that the council had discussed the matter at a Dec. 17 work meeting and directed staff to draft language that would exempt athletic competitions regardless of time of day and exempt other non-sport stadium activities only during daytime hours, with non-sport night activities requiring a permit from the mayor's office.

Residents asked follow-up questions about permitting, whether cleanup or setup times would be covered by an exemption, and how ambient baseline noise would be measured. Sanders said the draft language does not currently distinguish cleanup or setup time from event time and encouraged written comments to the council before the ordinance is placed on an agenda. He said staff expect the ordinance to be on the council agenda for a vote on January 28th.

The discussion in District 1 was advisory; Sanders repeatedly invited neighbors to email the council or speak at the council meeting when the item appears on the agenda. No ordinance vote occurred at the neighborhood meeting.