In recent months, said City Administrator Mike Nettles, the city has received "somewhere between a few and several complaints" regarding excessive noise emanating from audio speakers around town. And on Tuesday, the Altus City Council will discuss the problem -- again -- and try to come up with ways to deal with it.
Commercial car washes in the city are especially in the sights of frustrated citizens whose ears have taken all the decibels they can stand.
Deputy Municipal Court Clerk Lydia Dobbins said that since Jan. 1, 2004, police have issued 18 citations -- at $140 a pop -- for operating a motor vehicle with loud music. (The fine is now $144).
Those tickets are issued under a city ordinance that prohibits excessive or unusual noise on city streets or public rights of way and gives a police officer the power to ticket if he can hear the noise 50 feet or more away while he's in a vehicle with the windows up.
Another ordinance, which requires a citizen's complaint, prohibits the disturbing of the peace by loud or unusual noises on private or public property.
The noise level over this problem has been rising since August 1993, when the council appointed a committee to look into boom box emanations and vehicles blaring music loud enough to shake residential windows and bother people on the streets.
City Attorney Catherine Coke explained that the city has studied the problem for some time and that it still needs to research further what other cities are doing.
Included in the agenda book for this Tuesday's meeting are two newspaper articles about what the Lawton City Council has done, and is doing, about its own noise. Lawton is, as Coke said, "another city struggling with the same thing."
In that city's case, the council approved ordinance revisions this month setting the permitted decibels for sound amplifying equipment at 55 decibels (down from 60), taking the measurement of decibels from the property line on which the equipment is located. Sounds at car washes -- to include customer vehicles, stereos and on-site equipment -- may be 70 decibels from 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., and only 55 decibels from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.
In 1993-94 Altus city officials explored the purchase of decibel-measuring equipment but decided against it.
Coke explained that to deal with Altus' particular problem, council members may want to change ordinances or write new ones, to "do some research and see what we can do with ordinances to deal with this."
Coke emphasized that the discussion this time around involves parked vehicles. And, she said, "Whatever the council comes up with, it would have to be applied citywide, not just at car washes."
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