Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2025-05-06-NAC-min.pdfNoise Advisory Committee May 6, 2025 The committee met in a hybrid format. Present: Barbara Katzenberg, Elaine Rudell, Laura Rosen, and Benjamin Lees, and select board liaison Joe Pato Mr. Lees was chosen as the secretary for this meeting. Report from the chair on items from previous meetings: According to Jill Hai from the MAGIC group, they had put out a contract to review local municipal noise ordinances and will be issuing a report in June. According to Dave Pinsonneault, regarding compliance by the town with the leaf blower ordinance, the town is relying entirely on electric or 4-stroke blowers. This has increased the time cleanups take; they have discussed it with their contractors as well, but may have missed a few this time around. Code enforcement: The committee heard from Captain Barry from the police department about enforcement efforts. The code enforcement officer, Susan, is out and working. The department has been doing education for a few years now, so this is new. The code enforcement officer responds to every call she can while on duty, and follows up if she is not. The dispatcher sends an officer on a non-emergency basis if the CEO isn’t on duty; if no unit is available in the sector, a response may take a while. They are following up with people who provide contact info—in some cases, the complaints are about electric blowers. Data on the number of complaints received: 2022—26 complaints 2023—52 2024—55 2025—153 so far 2 from January to March, and 151 since then. Of those complaints, 33 turned out to be electric leaf blowers, and a dozen were gone on arrival. So they estimate a bit over half were probably founded. They have seen repeat callers and repeat offenders. The CEO has issued 6 bylaw violations. Mostly to homeowners so far, since they have viewed citations to the homeowners as most appropriate at this stage. Since it’s now the mowing season, it’s been less of an issue, but we’ll have to see when the season picks back up. They are discussing internally what the CEO’s season should be, given the allocated pot of money. They had a bilingual English/Spanish postcard—some people misunderstood (or “misunderstood”) the residential date included, so they’ve revised it. They have also added Portuguese. The general workflow is this: You call the business line and push to talk to dispatcher. If available, they take down info and ask a few questions to let the responder know what to look for. If Susan is on, they send it to her. If the complaint is founded, they take down the landscaper’s info, and the homeowner’s info, and make a note of it, coded so Susan can review it when she comes back. She checks the database and issues citations in her discretion. The focus has been on repeat offenders, but not all of the citations were for repeats. Things have gotten quieter lately. People do seem quick to call—especially on town staff, which Dave Pinsonneault has to take care about. The town treats the ban as applicable to construction use, even though it technically isn’t. The responses have varied: a spectrum from defiant to Micky the Dunce. Susan is ex-law enforcement, so she has some experience with sifting through that. Some calls are from local landscapers concerned about out-of-towners encroaching on their turf. Public comment: Melinda Walker gave a statement suggesting reconsideration of the implementation of the leaf blower bylaw; she felt it was unfairly applied. Bob Pressman expressed concern about both noise and safety of tree removals, which he had observed taking place in the street without a police detail. Mr. Pressman also asked about whether any of the noise ordinances we reviewed covered wood chipping. The members were unsure. In relation to blasting, there had been the question of whether crushing should be done off-site. Could the same be done for chipping a tree? Mr. Pato suggested that tree-chipping is generally emergency remediation: A tree is down and needs to be taken care of. It doesn’t fall under construction (and wouldn’t be over 7 days anyway). The noise bylaw mainly protects against sustained encroachment on neighbors’ life; tree-chipping should not be a persistent thing except when there’s a storm that knocks down a bunch of trees. Further business: Barbara had sent around a bill from Representative Ciccolo to support the gas-to-electric transition. The bill was sent to committee, which may mean it’s not going anywhere. Elaine will be gathering more information about existing resources for landscapers. There were two special permit discussions over last month. One was for the mural which we’d discussed previously; this seemed like the ideal use case for the permit. They did come to the select board. They said they would use white noise backup signals, and Mr. Pato believed the board granted the permit. He was not sure whether notification of neighbors was required. The other permit was a request by the town to do cleanup work before the 250th anniversary at 5 AM. There had been an annual permit for the department of public works on Patriots’ Day for at least as long as Mr. Pato has been on the select board. They switched to granting 3-year permits for it. Since the town has switched to electric, it is quieter, but it still is early in the morning. Someone from the public did want to go back to 1-year permit; the board did not do so but asked DPW to report back. All voted in favor of approval of the March minutes. All voted in favor of approval of the April minutes. The next meeting, in June, will be remote. Adjourned at 7:48.