Commission looks for new solutions to downtown issues

During a meeting Monday, the Sarasota City Commission agreed to consider a revised noise ordinance in the fall. In the process, the group also signaled an interest in alternate methods of addressing issues between downtown residents and businesses.

The city has been looking at rewriting its noise ordinance since 2012. Police have called the current regulations too vague, and residents have argued the ordinance is too lenient. Yesterday, City Attorney Robert Fournier presented a proposed new ordinance for consideration, streamlining the old rules and adding more severe punishments for repeat offenders.

The revised ordinance was originally scheduled for discussion in February, but the city tabled the conversation so that complaints from citizens could be addressed. Several residents said the new regulations were still too lenient, and that changes to the hours during which amplified noise would be allowed outdoors appeared to create a more lax standard than the current ordinance.

Fournier said the revised referendum wasn’t designed to make the standards stricter or more lenient. Instead, the office had three goals: making the ordinance easier to understand and enforce, instituting increasing penalties for repeat offenders and making greater use of a “plainly audible” standard when looking for noise violations, in addition to using decibel limits.

The new ordinance would establish a cutoff on outdoor amplified noise at 11 p.m. on weekdays and 11:59 on weekends, an hour later than the current standards for every business other than Mattison’s City Grille. While the letter of the law would change under this ordinance, Fournier said enforcement would stay the same. Since Mattison’s had a special exception to provide amplified music one hour later than the rest of the city, enforcing a different standard elsewhere would have violated other establishments’ rights to equal protection under the law. As a result, cops enforced the later standard across the board.

Residents present at Monday’s meeting said they were more satisfied with the proposed ordinance than the February draft, but still expressed displeasure with the 75-decibel standard for violations and the cutoff hours for outdoor amplified music. They also said enforcement of the current regulations needed to be stricter, because violators were infrequently cited.

“Decibel limits are like speed limits,” downtown resident Dennis Adams said. “They are routinely violated.”

The commission agreed to consider the revised ordinance at a public hearing in the fall, when more residents would be present to give feedback. In the meantime, they directed the city attorney’s office to look into alternate methods for governing how downtown businesses function late at night. Fournier said that it would be possible to create zoning regulations that place conditions on uses — such as late-night liquor service — likely to create noise issues, allowing the city to better regulate how frequent offenders operate.

Commissioner Paul Caragiulo suggested that the issues downtown residents have with neighboring nightlife establishments couldn’t be addressed with a citywide noise ordinance. Instead, he said, the commission had to discuss the type of environment they want to foster in the mixed-use downtown core.

“Sound is incidental to that,” Caragiulo said. “It's about land use; it's about planning.”

For more information about the commission's discussion, pick up a copy of Thursday's Sarasota Observer.

Contact David Conway at [email protected].