
October 3, 2024 · 0 Comments
By JAMES MATTHEWS
Mono’s noise legislation should incorporate a definition of noise rather than an accepted decibel range.
The results of a noise bylaw survey of residents was tabled in a report when council met Sept. 27. The report runs 116 pages.
“There’s a number of themes, I think, that we can draw from the public’s response,” Creelman said.
Paul Dray, the prosecutor for the town, is an expert in municipal law.
The noise bylaw is anchored in a definition of what constitutes noise as opposed to a decibel range to characterize what noise is.
Dray said decibel readings in the previous bylaw were very cumbersome for prosecutions. None of the municipalities for which he prosecutes use a decibel system.
As cited in case law, three bylaws have been struck down because of how the municipalities defined noise as something that disturbs or is unwanted sound.
“[There were] various things in the bylaw that the courts said, wait a minute that’s not fair,” Dray said.
For example, you may not like rap music and your neighbour listens to that genre of music. But that’s not a noise issue.
Dray said he considered ways to define noise that is not cumbersome or costly for the town to enforce. Staff have to be trained and fully qualified to use decibel readings as a measure. And the equipment has to be properly calibrated regularly.
All that takes time and money.
“So most municipalities have gone away from the decibel,” Dray said.
Mono’s proposed noise bylaw will be based on the definition of noise, he said.
“That’s where the case law comes in,” he said.
Mono council gave the first reading to the proposed noise bylaw on May 14 and directed staff to undertake a community survey to get feedback from residents and stakeholders.
The survey was distributed to residents through an unaddressed mailing service provided by Canada Post and advertising in the June 27 and July 18 issues of the Orangeville Citizen. It was also made widely available on the town’s website, social media channels, and Council Highlights over email.
As part of its social media promotion, the town leveraged Facebook’s paid advertising to use geographic targeting to increase the digital distribution of the survey. The first paid ad ran for seven days and reached 4,834 estimated accounts. The second ran for 10 days and reached 4,684 estimated accounts.
The survey required residents to provide their addresses with an optional field to submit their names. To prevent falsified entries coming from a single address, only one response was allowed per address. The addresses were all cross-referenced with address points in Mono and only submissions from Mono addresses were included in results.
Dray prosecutes for about 20 Ontario municipalities. And, he said, noise isn’t high on his docket for any of them.
“It’s something that usually develops because of a neighbour dispute,” he said. “Something between parties.”
The way to deal with such situations is through policy, he said.
“It is one person’s word against another, but you develop a policy that you have at least two maybe three complaints,” he said. “Then it becomes a valid issue.”
Dray recommended that council include an exemption in the noise bylaw for the sound generated by normal agricultural equipment and normal farming operations.
“I believe what you have before you is a reasonable bylaw,” he said.
Councillor Melinda Davie asked how a policy would be enforced compared to a bylaw.
“How would a bylaw and a policy dovetail?” she said.
“The bylaw is in place, so those are the rules,” Dray said. “But how do you enforce the rules, that’s the policy. So the policy sets out (that) we’re not going to enforce the bylaw on one person’s word.”
A single complainant wouldn’t merit the expense of a trip to a courtroom, he said. But a number of complainants lends weight.
“Now you know that this is a community problem and not just a neighbour complaint,” Dray said. “I think 90-some per cent of noise (complaints) is somebody doesn’t like their neighbour, doesn’t like something that they’re doing.”
“But it still boils down to the idea that the definition of noise (is that which is) likely to disturb someone,” Davie said. “Everybody is different. There are sometimes when I can handle all sorts of noise. And there are other times I can’t handle any because there’s other stuff going on in my head.”
Dray said the town would have to contend in court that a noise by its volume or nature likely offends.
If the definition references volume, Davie asked why there is a reluctance to put a decibel number to the bylaw.
Dray said every municipality is different, he said. The second concern is that staff training and decibel metres are very costly.
“You just can’t take your phone and say now we have a decibel system,” he said.
“A number of the comments in the survey was that we’re rural and we’re urban and that there should be some differentiation between what’s acceptable noise in rural (areas) compared with urban,” Coun. Ralph Manktelow said. “Is that a practical thing?”
“Not really in a noise bylaw,” Dray said.
Knut Holmsen, chairperson of the Mono Mulmur Citizen’s Coalition, said the focus of a noise bylaw should be focused on unnecessary obnoxious loud noises created by a few people to the detriment of all people.
He asked about steps being taken to adequately and realistically enforce the noise bylaw.
“The lack of enforcement seems to be the common failure everywhere with an arrogant disregard for laws exploding around us,” Holmsen said. “The punishment provided obviously doesn’t work.”