Agoura Hills council directs staff to prepare resolution to revoke New Era Performance business license after years of noise complaints

The Agoura Hills City Council on Jan. 22 directed staff to prepare a resolution to revoke the business license of New Era Performance and Tuning LLC after hearing testimony, an acoustical engineering report and resident complaints that the shop’s dynamometer operations repeatedly exceeded city noise limits.

Council action came after a prosecutor and the city’s acoustical expert told the council that dynamometer runs — where a vehicle is held in place and run at high RPM to measure power — produced noise levels that exceeded the city’s 65 dBA daytime threshold. The council voted 5–0 to ask staff to prepare a revocation resolution and return it at the Feb. 12 council meeting.

The case began when City Prosecutor Eric Marcus presented staff’s evidence, saying the city had received complaints as early as 2017 and renewed complaints in 2021 and thereafter. Marcus told council the city retained Acoustics Group, Inc., whose principal, Robert Wu, performed short- and long-term noise monitoring near the complainants’ properties. "We identified 15 clear dyno runs," Wu testified, and many of those events produced LEQ (energy-average) and LMAX (peak) levels that exceeded Agoura Hills Municipal Code limits, Marcus said.

Business owner Alexander Esparza disputed some aspects of the evidence and urged the council to consider context: he said his shop had installed an insulated roll‑up garage door at a personal cost of roughly $15,404, that some recorded high readings occurred when he was out of town, and that vehicle exhaust noise is regulated at the state level for vehicles. Esparza repeatedly said he was willing to try to work with neighboring businesses on scheduling but said limiting dyno hours would make his business difficult to run.

Neighbors and adjacent business owners gave extended on-the-record testimony about the operational impact. Diane Ricci, who owns an office building that houses recording studios, said musicians and clients had to stop sessions because the dyno noise was “so harsh” it interrupted creative work. Danny Cricca, a neighboring automotive shop owner of 38 years, told council the shop had made changes that reduced noise and he no longer found it disruptive. Other neighbors said they still experienced intrusive spikes and anxiety from repeated events.

The city’s prosecutor and the acoustical consultant urged the council to find that the dynamometer operations constituted a public nuisance under Agoura Hills Municipal Code §68.19 and noise standards at §93.05 (65 dBA daytime). Marcus said the council may revoke a license if it finds operation constitutes an immediate threat or menace to the public health, safety or welfare. After deliberation, the council voted to direct staff to prepare a revocation resolution with findings based on the record and return it at the Feb. 12 meeting; the motion passed on a roll call vote 5–0.

Councilmembers asked staff to bring a resolution that included the record’s factual findings and also discussed a practical timeline; staff told council the resolution could be framed to be effective on a date the council selects (staff recommended returning the drafted resolution on Feb. 12 so the council could adopt it then). Councilmembers also discussed — and rejected as impractical — narrower options such as limiting dyno hours to a small number of days per week as a workable compromise, given variability of customers and vehicle exhaust characteristics.

The council’s procedural decision does not itself revoke the license immediately; rather it directs staff to prepare a resolution memorializing the council’s factual findings and legal basis for revocation. That draft will return to council on Feb. 12 for final action, at which time the council may adopt the resolution and set an effective date.

Because the council’s action was to send a revocation resolution back to council rather than adopt revocation now, the shop remains licensed pending final council action. Staff and the city prosecutor said they would monitor compliance in the interim and could take enforcement steps if additional violations occur.

What’s next: staff will prepare a resolution for council consideration on Feb. 12 that lays out the factual findings and legal determinations supporting revocation, and the council will vote then on whether to adopt the revocation and set an effective date.