2007 0315 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting March 15, 2007 City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida realize that Collins A venue on occasion has a ambient background noise that sometimes exceeds the 60 decibels, if that were to happen and there is a complaint, we would have to have the Code Enforcement Officer discern whether the spike in noise was background or emanating from the complaint source. He said taking Ocean IV as an example, lets say the ambient background noise was 65 decibels and with the fan on it was 70 decibels, in that case there would be a violation issued to Ocean IV. If the ambient background noise was 65 db's and the fan was off and it was still 65 db's then there would be no violation issued. Commissioner Iglesias said we are using 60 db's, if you put your meter behind any oceanfront property, you will get more than 60 db's just on the tidal current, and asked if we have done an ambiance study before we came up with 60 db's, and noted that in the future this will be eliminated a little because once the new condos are required to have the impact resistant windows they will hold a lot more noise. City Manager Szerlag said that 60 db's is an industry standard, and prior to identifying 60 db's for the construction noise ordinance, Mr. Solera and Mr. Vera did a survey of many cities in Florida and other points north of us, and 60 db's seemed to be about the average, and other governments use 60 db's at the affected property line as a standard. He said it is up to the Commission to determine what constitutes a level of noise emanating from neighbors, we used 60 because that was the standard, but we realize that ifthere is a ambient background noise that is more than 60, it depends on the time of day, day of the week, the wind velocity, it depends on a number of things, but we wanted to have some specificity so that it wasn't a subjective decision. He said if we can measure something against background noise, and again, if the background noise is higher then 60 db's, we can discern whether the source by turning off or on the fan in this instance, how that affects background noise, it is whatever is greater. Mr. Solera said if you have impact resistance windows, you may not hear noise inside but you may hear noise outside. Mayor Edelcup said if the ambience noise level is 60 or less in that area, then any noise above that 60 will be deemed a violation, if the ambient noise level is above 60 there won't be a violation unless it causes a reading higher then whatever is taking place in the ambient level that is above 60. Commissioner Goodman asked if we are talking about equipment that is outside the building or inside the building, and Mr. Solera said in this specific case, the buildings have fans located on one side of the building which evacuate every single exhaust excess inside the parking garage, and there is an opening on one side of the building where the wind goes through and the fans on the other side evacuate that wind. Commissioner Goodman asked if we are talking about the 11 :00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. or are we speaking about these noises all day, and Mr. Solera said the Ordinance goes from II :00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. City Manager Szerlag said it is 24/7, we did not want to get into the position where we would police one neighbor against the other within the same building, we didn't want someone calling Mr. Solera or the Police to say there is loud music one floor above me and they are making too much noise. Mayor Edelcup said the preceding ordinance defines what a nuisance is and somebody playing loud music would be a nuisance, so they will be getting caught on that one anytime during the day. City Manager Szerlag said that we would hope that the security people within their own condo units would take care of that issue. Vice Mayor Thaler asked how much time we let pass before we go from the warning to a violation. Mr. Solera said we need to take into consideration what needs to correct the issue, so we have to think if the issue needs to be corrected, the timeframe of seven (7) days will be 5