Council looks to crack down on noise
Specifically, the new ordinance would affect businesses that opened near residential areas, such as the Publix shopping center on County Line Road.
Many residents living near the shopping center have complained about dumpsters being emptied early in the morning, sometimes between the hours of 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. Residents have also said street sweepers also cause a problem between the hours 10 p.m. to midnight.
“The reason the homeowners support this ordinance is because the ordinance provides a consistent uniformed city-wide way of dealing with these types of conditions where planning and zoning has one bite of the apple for buffering, but noise is omni-directional,” Arterburn said.
He said Publix and some of the other businesses have been extremely cooperative with the homeowners, but he would like to see some ordinance in place so homeowners would not have to rely on “handshake” agreements with business owners.
Arterburn said when the residents have called the police to deal with some of the noise problems the ordinances in place are not enough to allow officers to take action.
He also provided video clips to the council that demonstrated the noise level.
Claudia Passero, owner of Power Vac Services, which is the company who runs the street sweepers that maintain the shopping center’s parking lots, said she was confident the home owners and her company could find a compromise that works well for both parties.
She said Power Vac had to do the same thing in Huntsville when the Target Shopping center was built near Valley Bend Drive.
She added that it would be difficult for her company to sweep the parking lots before 9 p.m. because of safety issues, but she is willing to work with homeowners and the city.
Currently Power Vac has cut the number of times it sweeps the Publix parking lot to Monday and Thursday each week and she said they run the street sweeper for about an hour at night and then come back and finish up early in the morning to help accommodate local residents.
In other business, the mayor said he plans to publish a list of openings on city boards and extend the application period for those boards. He also gave the council the job description for a retail recruiter for their approval and hopes to have one in place by January 2009.
