News

By Margie Plunkett
    
A group of downtown restaurant and bar owners wants to revise the city’s noise ordinance after it became apparent several are in violation of newly adopted requirements.  
Members had asked City Commission for 60 days to come up with more fitting noise regulations.
    The group met with a consultant, the Downtown Development Authority, attorneys who drafted the city’s ordinance and code enforcement officers in an attempt to come up with a better noise ordinance.
    Group members had differing opinions on how noise should be regulated and didn’t reach a consensus in a meeting held Dec. 17, according to Burt Rapoport of Deck 84.
    About 30 people attended the five-hour meeting, he said, and the group plans to meet again after the holiday to determine what it wants out of the ordinance. They’ll come back to City Hall after that meeting.
    At City Commission’s Dec. 4 meeting, Mayor Woodie McDuffie said of the city’s ordinance, “It would appear practically, that what we’re requiring is almost undoable.”
    Commissioner Adam Frankel said then that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving he had received an email from Rapoport about his surprise about the ordinance and the public hearings that were held.
    Several establishments noted that they had no knowledge that the public hearings on the issue would be held, the commissioner said.
    The new ordinances impose penalties for first offenders of $1,000 for excessive noise.
    Delray Beach’s police chief said that his department could issue warnings rather than tickets until the issue is worked out.