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Board hears competing accounts of acoustical evidence and decibel readings
Summary
The hearing featured a dispute over evidence: neighbors submitted videos and decibel claims recorded inside garages, the company's acoustician recorded limited five-minute snippets on two days, and the company disputed the representativeness and methodology of the neighbors' recordings.
A central technical dispute at the hearing involved how noise was measured and whether submitted recordings accurately represented typical conditions.
Neighbors presented hundreds of videos, many recorded from inside garages, and said those clips showed sustained objectionable noise. The appellant's representative countered that recordings from within garages amplify sound and that the company had its own decibel reader and hired BD Hajduk Acoustics (Bruce Haddock) to perform a study that captured short samples across two days; the representative said the longest event shown in the company's review lasted about eight seconds and peak readings were short-lived.
Board members asked whether the city had recorded decibel levels; staff said the local code treats "objectionable noise" through the disturbing-the-peace ordinance and does not specify a decibel threshold for zoning enforcement. Several board members raised questions about the limited sampling windows in the acoustician's report and whether the report's short recordings and the neighbors' recording methods could be compared directly.
