2026-10-22 - Board of Representatives Operations, Parks and Recreation Committee

Good evening everyone, my name is Chair Dan Sanford and this is the October 22nd meeting of the Operations Parks and Recs Committee meeting. The time is 702 p.m. and at this time we'll go ahead and call Roll. Sheila, do you mind helping me out on that? Sure. Representative Beckham, Representative Bradford. Present. Representative Dittolo. Present. Representative Finkel. Present. Representative Gardner. Present. Representative Peligia. Present. Representative Salas. Present. Chair Sanford. Present. Representative Zachary. Present. So I think it's just Representative Beckham so far that's not on yet. Okay, thank you so much. And any ex-officio members do we have? I know there's some people interested but... Yes, we have Representative Boudreau. That may be it. Oh, Representative Zachary is on now. Thank you. I'm still here. Okay. Representative Boudreau is on also. All right. And then also for everyone's knowledge members of the administration, we've got Director Jodie Bishop, I believe Senior Traffic Planner, Luke Buttonweiser, Brandon Mark from Parks and Recs Commission, Ben Pomeritz, and that might be it. I know there's a couple people that are going to be joining us a little bit later. So whenever they join, we'll go ahead and make that announcement. I believe Lou Derubis is on as well. And Director Lou Derubis, thank you, Lou, for joining us. So at this time, without further ado, and I apologize, I'm a little under the weather so my voice is kind of leaving me. But we have the three items, the first two are resolutions and public hearings. What I'm going to do is do one public hearing, and then take up the item and approve it, and then go down to the next public hearing, take up the item and approve it. There's a couple ways of doing it, but I think this makes a lot of sense in terms of time and just in efficiency. So the first item on our agenda is OPR 32.018, a resolution and public hearing approving the cost of recovery fee model for electric vehicle chargers at the Bell Street Garage. And at this time at 704pm, I will open up the public hearing. Are there any members of the public that are speaking on this item? There was nobody signed up for it. Oh, there's one person with their hand raised. I will let them talk. Is that okay? Yes. Good evening, Operations Park and Rec Commission. This is Dave Adams, Glenbrook Road in Stanford. This was debated on the 31st board whether or not to put these electric chargers into the garage, these two garages. I'm going to speak about it because I think it's a joint item. There was debate about whether or not to put these chargers in the first place and what the responsibility of the city would be in recovering the cost of the electricity that was transferred. It was brought up by at least one representative that this is analogous to a fuel station. And the city really shouldn't be in the business of operating a fuel station. I feel the same way now as that representative did on the 31st board. And I don't think that it was ever appropriate to put these chargers in the city garages to begin with. And I don't think that they're appropriate to exist to anywhere spot fuel stations because they're a fuel source. That's what it is. And those are my thoughts. One other thing, I don't think that as far as I remember, the conversation revolved around whether or not you could even charge for the first two years or something by state law. I think the state law said that you can't make a profit, right? So how do you determine what is profitable if you're setting a fixed rate when rates are variable? I'd love for that conversation to occur during this evening. And those are my thoughts. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for your service. And I hope you have a wonderful evening. Thank you, Mr. Adams. Is there anyone else from the public wishing to speak on this item? Yes, there is a Jeffrey Maron. What was the last name? I'm sorry, Mr. Maron, the floor is yours. You have three minutes, sir. Thank you. I won't need the full three minutes, but I appreciate the time. My name is Jeffrey Maron, M-A-R-O-N, living in Ravona. And I just want to say that I 100% agree with the prior statement. I don't understand why our local government would be involved in this business anymore than as he put it out, putting in a natural gas station, putting in a fuel station of any kind, being in the car repair business or anything else. It's outside of what it is that we should be providing as a service, and it benefits a few at the expense of the many. And I don't believe that this is something that our taxes should be going for. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Anyone else? No one else with their hands raised. I don't see anyone else. At this time, I will consider the public hearing for OPR 32.018 closed at 7.08 PM. And at this time, I will entertain a motion to approve item OPR 32.018, a resolution approving cost and recovery fee model for electric vehicle chargers at the Bell Street garage. The motion on the floor is to approve item 1, OPR 32.018, approving cost recovery fee model for electric vehicle chargers at the Bell Street garage. Is there a second? Second. At this time, I will open it up to discussion to the floor. Is there any discussion on this item here? Dean, none. I'm sorry, I just saw something. Representative Felicia. Thank you. Thank you, chair. I guess just kind of addressing one item there, and we may have to kind of pull it back up. But who do we have on from the administration here? I guess it kind of goes into the funding for it. You know, the mention it was using tax dollars to pay for it. But I just want to confirm that that is potentially not the case. Because, you know, this model is again, cost recovery. So the tax dollars aren't directly paying for, you know, for people to charge their cars or anything like that. So just kind of looking for a little discussion on that. Hey, Luke Budweiser, do you want to take that? I could, I could speak to this. Brandon. Yeah, Brandon. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sure for the parking side, Brandon. Thank you, sir. Yeah. So these chargers were part of a grant opportunity from Connecticut deep. It was a pretty lucrative grant for 65% of the total cost of the project. And then part of the stipulation is that we couldn't charge and get a profit in the first three years of operation. And then in order to kind of ensure that we're breaking even, we did develop this model that does have some fixed components, but is variable in nature as the cost of electricity goes up or down. The way that this model works is it allows us to change the rate based off of that, that cost. We are not. And then one other point I just wanted to kind of address is I don't think this is necessarily a fueling station situation. Had this been a situation where they're DC fast chargers, I do think the turnover would be really high because people would go in and out within, you know, 15 minutes and they would definitely create that fuel station type of atmosphere. But level two charging is very common for businesses, municipal governments all across the country. And so this is really just a convenience to residents and visitors of the government center, as well as to support the city fleet that is slowly transitioning over to electric vehicles. So that's just the couple of points I wanted to add, but I could address anything else that anyone has questions about. Did that answer your question, Representative Felicia, and then I've got Representative Dittelow just second. Yes, yeah, I think it did. Thank you. I yield. Representative Dittelow. Thank you, Chair Sanford. This is to Brandon as well through you, Chair Sanford. What's the duration of this agreement? Because I know you said it was the first three years that we weren't able to make a profit. Would this come back before operations in three years for to be reevaluated to ensure if we want to discuss at least have the opportunity to discuss again, whether it should be a for profit item, which I think is valid concern, or whether or not that these are making money for the city or not. Just want to kind of clarify that if you know the answer to that. Yeah, we haven't spoken about it at length. This is myself and the Director of Operations, Matt Quiñones. We will revisit this after the three year term. This recovery model is purely just to recover the operating costs. It's not designed to make profit. So I can't give you a definitive answer, but based on my prior conversations, it seems the case that we would come before the board again in three years. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Sheila, I think Representative Hughes is in the waiting room. Can you bring him over? I don't say him unless he's called Zoom user. You want me to ask if that's him? Yeah. Thank you, Chair Sanford. The floor is yours, Representative Hughes. Sorry. Was your hand raised for a question or are you just trying to get in the meeting? Yeah, I was just trying to get into the meeting. Apologies. No, not apologies. We're welcome. This is going to be fun. All right. So does anyone else want to speak on the item that we're talking about right now? I don't see any other hands. With that said, we have a motion to approve and a second. No more discussion. We can try this by voice vote. All those in favor of approving, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? That item passes and I believe that would be 800 if everyone, I don't remember if everybody showed up. Yes, that's correct. Okay. Thank you, everyone. We will now do a little deja vu and go back to item number two. If we can go back to the agenda real quick, I thought I wrote it down. At this time, I would like to start the public hearing for item number two, OPR 32.019, resolution and public hearing approving the cost and recovery fee model for electric vehicle chargers at the government center garage. So same idea, different place. And the time is 714. Are there any speakers that are wishing to speak on this item? Yes, Dave Adams. Mr. Adams, the floor is yours. You have three minutes, sir. Thank you very much, Chair. Dave Adams, Glenbrook Road again. Thank you very much for letting me speak again. I just want to kick back on part of the presentation that was offered before and whether or not this is, you know, a fuel station or feels like a fuel station. The reality is that semantics fuel in this case, in this context is synonymous with energy and energy comes in whatever format that it comes in, whether it be a burnable fuel or be electricity that is pumped into your battery and whatever. The reality is here is that after three years as described, you're going to become in, you're going to migrate into a nonprofit and, you know, providing a nonprofit service to then having the ability to provide a for-profit service that becomes commerce. And that is not appropriate for this government to be involved in. And that's what I'm trying to assert here. And I recognize it's not really, you know, sinking in and that's, I understand, but I think it's really important for you to at least be firmly aware of the long-term endeavor here and what the, what the, what, what, what kind of implications that may have 10, 15 years from now. Thank you very much for your time up. Again, have a wonderful evening. Thank you, Mr. Adams. Is there anyone else wishing to speak on item number two? There are no other hands raised. There are no other hands raised. I will declare that this public hearing for item number two is closed at 7, 16 PM. I will now entertain a motion to take up, excuse me, I'll now entertain a motion to approve item two, OPR 32.019, a resolution public hearing approving the cost and recovery fee model for electric vehicle chargers at the government center garage. The motion on the table is to approve OPR 32.019, a resolution and public hearing approving the cost recovery fee model for electric vehicle chargers at the government center station. Is there a second? Second. Second. Is there any discussion? I don't see any hands Sheila unless you see something I don't. No, I do not see any hands. With no more hands raised, I will now take this to a voice vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstained? That item passes 8-0-0. Thank you everyone. And I appreciate the public for joining us. We'll now move to item number three, OPR 32.020, a review feedback and suggestions for potential revisions of chapter 164, Stanford's noise ordinance submitted by myself. Can I entertain a motion to take up item number three? So move. The motion is to discuss, review item number three. Is there a second? Second. At this time, I'm going to open it up to discussion, but I'm going to kind of put down a little bit of some guardrails on what the idea here is. I've asked the members of the administration to join us today. So we've got our director of health, Jodi Bishop. We've got in that department as well, agreement Joe. We have Lou Durovus, who's director of public safety. I believe the director of operations will be joining us. We have a lot of people that are going to be joining us. We also have some input possibly from the parts and rec commission, Mr. Ben Pomerance is here. The idea is, is this is not a complaint session, but really some feedback to how do we improve our current situation to where it's more effective and for the entire city. I think the last time that we really re-looked our noise ordinances was back in the 80s. So it's going on 40 years now. We've had some patchwork here and there. So the idea is, is to get some feedback from some of the folks that are implementing this to hear some of their pain points, some of their ideas, maybe in exchange. So what I was going to do is let director Bishop open it up because I think she bears a brunt of this enforcement mechanism. And then we'll let her kind of discuss and lay out some of her thoughts. We'll open it up for some questions and then we can pass the baton down to director Durovus and if anybody else joins in that. So my point is to have a thoughtful discussion. It's not a blame fester pointing fingers, but the idea is that we can take this feedback and somehow present later on down the road with a more effective noise ordinance. That's the idea. So at this time, director Bishop, you've been, thank you so much for joining us and jumping on that grenade to go first. I really appreciate it. So anyway, I'll go ahead and open it up to you. And thank you if you want to go ahead and I'm going to mute myself. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you. Yes, this has been challenging this year because of the number of complaints we've had around noise and we've been trying to track them and understand where they're coming from and for what reasons with all of the construction occurring in the city at this time. And that's one of them. Some of the events have caused a lot of complaints and we've gotten a little bit more control around the food establishments, restaurants, bars with the noise that was very evident a couple of years ago. And we've worked a lot with those food establishments. Some of the challenges to this, I mean, for us, we don't have inspectors on 24/7. So for us to respond to noise complaints, we normally would not be able to be there right away. If it was an ongoing complaint and we knew the time of day, we can schedule the inspectors to inspect if it's something consistent that's happening. But the police do pick that up when we're not on, you know, they're able to come and also determine whether or not they're out of compliance with the ordinance or if they have a waiver, which we call a noise waiver in the ordinance, it calls it a variance, which I can issue. And most of the, I'm up to over 120 requests so far for 2026, calendar 2026 is how they get counted in our system. And not all of them have been issued. Some of them have been rejected or they're somewhere along the line because engineering is part of that process only in that it helps us to understand it's especially with construction projects that they're actual projects that are sanctioned. But that's a lot. Most of them are for when it comes to construction, it's for either early morning start, there is a misunderstanding, our noise ordinance says construction can begin at eight o'clock on weekdays and 10 o'clock on Sundays and federal holidays. There is a misunderstanding among contractors as to what those hours actually are. So we spend a lot of time educating them around that. We suspect that a lot do start at seven o'clock. That is what other, there's some deep, that's their guideline and they do just start anyway and unless we get a complaint, we don't know that. I have gotten a lot of requests for early morning starts, especially this past summer because of the heat. So I think it's something to consider that there is a kind of a mindset among contractors that they do start at that time. And I think as we see more heat events, it is something you might have to consider. And then the overnights. So overnight, I try to be very discriminatory in terms of what I'm actually approving. There was a time when I would approve pretty much all requests because they just seemed pro forma. But now because there's so much going on and there's so many complaints that I've been really carefully scrutinizing them and making sure they're for things that are really necessary. Sometimes it's required night work for paving, which is required to happen at night. Sometimes it's a project that has to be done within a certain time frames, for example, overnight cement pour and things like that. I'm learning a lot of that construction. So those are the kinds of things I'm seeing. And in terms of other areas of enforcement, even if our inspectors were to go out with a noise meter, for example, if it was an establishment downtown, sometimes it's really hard to pinpoint the noise and there's so much ambient noise around it that that makes actual enforcement at decibel level challenging. So those are some of the things. The events I have, even though the ordinance does exempt events, I have been since there was that event that really was a problem for many, many residents in the city at Mill River. I have been requesting that they request a waiver. So at least I have a little bit of control over the hours and the decibel level and have some knowledge about the event. And then also to be able to do mitigation beforehand and discuss it with them, put it actually in my notes in the waiver that these are the things that we agree to for them to mitigate the positioning of the speakers and things like that. So I do think that is a useful tool for those kinds of events. Again, they're exempt already if there was some hours that were put on those or at least requiring that they get a waiver, I think that would help with the control. So those are some of my thoughts. Director Job is here if he has anything to add around because he's managing the inspectors who are doing the investigations. So if there's anything around that. We also put in a few years ago the patios that one of the deterrence was if they were found to be in violation of the noise ordinance that they could lose their, you know, I could withdraw my signature on the patio permit. So that was another way we had of controlling that noise somewhat for those establishments that were having the outdoor patio noise issues. Thank you so much. I'm going to do two questions and then I'm going to move to Director Job if that works just in case the question is fresh in their mind and they don't want to lose it. Representative Zachary, you want to go first? Sure. Thank you, Chair Sanford. So I have a few questions and they can be either to you, Director Bishop or to Director Job. The question was how many complaints do we actually get a year and do you have them broken out by type and time of day to have them right this moment, but it'd be good to know. Yeah. Yeah. I have the number for 2526 was 241. Now some of those are duplicates. So those are what's coming in to fix it. And if we get emails, I, we try to put them also and fix it. So we have, that's our record. So, and right now I'm up to 79 for fiscal year 2627. So again, a lot of repeats, a lot of the same person. So they are mostly downtown when it, when we put them on a map. Okay. And I have two more brief, but I hope are brief questions. How many of those led to an actual meter reading and how many led to a citation? Abrahma, do you have any of that? I don't think we did any citations, but the meter readings, I, do you remember how many investigations we did with the meter reading? Again, we spend a lot of time talking to the establishment, whether it be, you know, sometimes it's the dog barking at a doggy daycare. It could be, we have a gym that's operating in a residential building that wakes people up in the morning. So we have to spend a lot of time telling them they, they have to take those steps to mitigate that noise and stay within the noise ordinance. Okay. And one, sorry. Just to add to that, just to mention that we have at least maybe four readings and we have issued one citation for the one on summer street, which is the gym. And that's at least four plus decide one citation. So one citation. And last question, how many working calibrated meters and trained offices do we actually have? We have two meters calibrated that we use and we have about five inspectors that are trained to get noise readings. Great. Thank you. I yield. Thank you very much. Thank you, representative Zachary, represent Felicia. Thank you. Thank you here, Stanford. I guess kind of my two questions are around, maybe if we're kind of just comparing also to Norwalk, would it be helpful if we kind of implement a no meter and like a plainly auditable standard? That way, you know, if the noise is loud, does it need to be metered to be able to issue a citation? I know Norwalk uses that model. I haven't obviously talked to anyone in Norwalk in enforcement in Norwalk, maybe director Bishop. I don't know if you have been in touch with the director of health there, but maybe something that could be helpful here if there's only two meters and five inspectors, you know, obviously there's more inspectors than meters, right? So maybe that could be useful if we looked in the maybe a potential change or something we can discuss as well. I'm not sure if it would hold up if you were issuing a fine and someone was going to take it to court or, you know, we always, whatever we do, we have to be able to have the documentation to back it up. I think the only challenge would be how do we isolate the noise? Because in order to issue a citation, you have to make sure that you know exactly where, who is generating the noise and where it's coming from. So to do this point, if you don't have a meter, it'd be very challenging, I think, to isolate the noise and issue the citation appropriately. Understood. Thank you. I know, I think Norwalk, kind of, on the basis is a testimony of the enforcement officer with an unaided, you know, unaided hearing and at a certain distance and there's, they have like all these criteria. Certainly something I guess we can take offline. Happy to, you know, we can maybe talk to Norwalk and see how it's gone for them and if it's gone to court or not court, but, you know, been appealed. Right. I don't think it is their director of health is the enforcement on that. I did, I did speak to them. But yeah, but it doesn't matter whoever it is. Yeah, it would be interesting to know. Yeah, okay. No, I'll make it out here and we can kind of regroup on that after. And I guess, I guess my other question would be around construction and demolition noise. Again, you know, if we're going, if we're looking at other other towns around us, I know, you know, we're seven to eight weekdays, right? Eight to eight Saturdays, just reading my notes here and then Sundays and holidays, which is again, where there's confusion around the holidays because there's two different types of holidays, which we should probably look into correcting with this as we talk about this or talk about changes. Sundays and holidays are ten to five. Norwalk doesn't allow construction on Saturdays. So in the residential zones, and then it's ten to three for commercial industrial zones. So just, you know, there's some comparisons and contracts there that we can look at. And then Sundays, for example, we're ten to five, Norwalk has none, Greenwich has none. So you're not allowed to do any construction in either of those towns. So, you know, we're, you know, already kind of looking at those two towns is, you know, they look at Newcane and other towns around us. But I don't know, there's something that may be considered looking into and changing as well. Give people, you know, a little more time enjoy their weekend as well. So no, no question there. I guess more, more of a comment. But I'm happy to hear any kind of concerns with that. For me, Director Bishop, I guess. Yeah, I mean, that I, I don't get a lot of requests for weekend work. So I don't know, you know, in terms of the waivers is usually during the week. But although I do think I have one coming up on up paving. But, yeah, so I don't I don't know. I think I think it's I'm not sure how that would impact construction in the city. It might be something more for the engineering or what another department who's issuing those permits. I know Director Canones and I talked about it in passing, but Luke, you don't have to spend I'm not trying to put you on the spot. But do you have two minutes that you might be able to address kind of some of the things that you've seen with all the construction we've got going on? I can really speak mostly towards road construction. So my office is in charge of like road construction in the city. I would say Saturday work does actually happen pretty frequently on in staff around roads. It's actually, I'd say pretty important for roadway construction on Saturdays. I know most of them do start later in the day on Saturdays, and usually there is Sunday work, it's actually at night. So what crews will do, and this is actually a lot of times requirements like the state is they'll do Sunday night into Monday morning, Monday night, Tuesday morning, Saturday night actually working Friday nights. You know, and I know the director mentioned night work. A lot of times we impose night work for traffic and safety concerns. Right? I don't think anyone wants to shine out washing a boulevard and rush shower during the day. So those are just, you know, some things to keep in mind. But yeah, weekend work does happen Saturdays, more frequently than Sundays and Sundays, it's always at night usually. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. It definitely does. You know, just something I know, obviously, commercial industrial zones, we're, I guess, looking at Norrock there, they have 10 to 3 on the weekend. But then, of course, noise waivers are always, always applicable, but something to look at. I don't know if it's appropriate now. I did have maybe less for Director Bishop, but you know, there are a few other things I want to go into was like penalties and refuse collection hours, but I don't know if that's the time for that right now. Cara Sanford, I can hold that for later. Yeah, what I think I'm going to do is have Representative Hughes, followed by De La Cruz, and then take a quick break and go back to some of our guests that have been patiently waiting such as Director De Rubis, because he might have some input that might change your question or something like that, if that makes sense. Representative Hughes, do you want to go ahead? Thanks, Chair Sanford. My question actually was along the lines of refuge pickup time, so I can hold off if you'd like. Okay, yeah, I, yeah, let's, let's hold off and if we have some other guests join us, we can go from there. Representative De La Cruz, do you have a question? Yes, thank you, Dan. First, let me commend you for bringing this matter up and putting it on the agenda. Noise complaints is a recurring situation I get, and there isn't a shortage of studies on the health effects of noise, so it's certainly an item well worth discussing. I had a question for John Pelicia, if I may, through you to John? Sure, if you're okay with that, John, did he? Yes, no, no problem, sorry. Hi, John. In your comparison with other towns, do other towns also have the opportunity to get a waiver from observing the noise ordinance? That I did not look at, but I would assume they would most, I would imagine most towns, you know, without going, yeah, I didn't look at that, but I would imagine they do. I can pull up, try to pull something up really freaking circle back, but. Yes, okay, we can do some research offline because I'm sure that this will be an ongoing discussion. In the past, my recollection was, and I'm trying to remember the name of the Corporation Council, he has since then passed away, but in the few times that the violation to the ordinance was taken to court, the feedback from the court was that our ordinance was literally unenforceable and he couldn't, you know, get it to stake in court. I don't know if Director Bishop Bulan has had that experience if she has taken any violations to court. I haven't, but I know during our training, it was pointed out to us that our ordinance would be difficult to enforce. We, you know, we have to abide by deep in terms of stringency. We can be more stringent, but not less. So, we do have that as our guideline. And they do have the standards of what the level should be. And, you know, part of it is the isolation of the noise. Part of it is that there are certain things that happen, like even just, I say the outdoor dining, even the voices can almost themselves be over a noise meter, you know, reading the level that is allowable. So, it's easy to get to that point in that I don't know what the judge would have been referring to exactly, but those are kind of some of the things that I've heard. Well, hopefully after this effort, we can arrive at an ordinance that is more enforceable and can stand up in court. Dan, that's all I have for now. How are you? Do you have any suggestions on how do we communicate suggestions or improvements to you? Yeah, I think I'll address it as we wrap up. The idea would be, you know, take this input, put something together, get some feedback on it, then go through the perfect, you know, the usual routes of getting legal review and then submitting it. And by the time we have some type of ordinance submitted, we have, we know we're going to be tweaking it, but we have some type of 80, 85% solution that's, that we're not still, you know, doing what we're doing now. But the other goal is, is to not have it as a review item for months and months to use this kind of downtime of the wintertime. Well, there's not a lot of concerts and there's not a lot of, you know, you know, outdoor dining stuff kind of going on and row construction and really kind of get a good product that we can, you know, execute in the spring of next year. That's the idea, timeline wise. Oh yes, this will take a while. Oh, thank you. I'm on you then. You got it. Representative Hughes, is your hand still raised for question? I was going to move on to... No, sorry. That's all right. Representative Felicia. Thank you. Thank you. Just really quick for, through you to Virgil just answering one question. I pulled up the Norwalk ordinance and I did see that the Director of Health can issue a variance in Norwalk. And it actually goes interesting because the applicant also has to publish notices to any of butters within 200 feet. So it goes even a little, a little further than just, you know, than just getting the variance. So hope that's helpful. I didn't look in the Greenwich, but I can follow up. That was it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Director Grubus, do you want to go ahead and maybe give some of your thoughts and some of the stuff that you're seeing in your area? Yeah, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Committee. You know, this has been long overdue. So I do thank this board for taking up this issue. It's been long overdue and it's a complicated issue. And I think that's why it's kind of been one that we continue to add different components to our noise ordinance. If you pull it up on Unicode, it's just over 20 pages long. It's a really, really complex document. There's a lot of confusion. Even in a controlled environment, when we meet internally and we try and like dissect it, we're confused in a controlled environment. So when you're asking contractors or community members to understand the code and follow the code, you know, that's, it's kind of setting us up for failure. So I think one thing I'd like to see happen through this process is us really kind of streamline this ordinance and take a reasonable and common sense approach. I hear a lot of talk about what other jurisdictions are doing. And I think it is important that we monitor and look at what other jurisdictions are doing, but deep is like who we have to follow. So I think that's our baseline by what we have to kind of go off of. But more importantly, once we follow the deep minimum requirements, you know, what works for the city of Stanford, we're a much more growing and dynamic city than Norwalk or Greenwich, no offense to them. It's just different demographics. So we have to find that balance where what allows our city to continue to function, whether it be early morning construction, weekend construction, overnight construction, large scale events, special events, or even are some of our restaurants and bar establishments who play live music. Those are really the three areas that are pertaining to this noise issue where we get the most activity coming in to fix it in our departments. So I think I heard a lot in regards to enforcement. And I think we should kind of take a different approach with this. Like obviously, you need to have an enforcement component. And I'm not a big fan of the decibel readings. But in our conversations, there has to be a component. If you're going to enforce this with an ordinance where we have to rely on that decibel reading. But I think the more important point I'm trying to make is that we should work to establish protocols and guidelines so that we don't have to get to that reading portion. And some of the things that I think this group could kind of visit in their review of this item is how do we incorporate this noise ordinance into building permits or event permits? Because currently how some of that language reads is that you're automatically exempt. Well, if we establish an ordinance that is a strong, common sense, reasonable ordinance, then they have to follow the ordinance in order to get that permit. That should be part of our workflow in the permitting process. And then we have to establish an enforcement component where if they are in compliance with the ordinance, how do we enforce that? Because the goal is always to kind of educate people through compliance. The ordinance isn't designed to generate revenue or to try and automatically go to enforcement. It's designed to go and kind of educate people and kind of get them to comply. And it's been through my experiences, not just in law enforcement with the city, but in this role. When I first came into this role, especially, we were getting a large high volume of complaints of noise complaints through restaurants and establishments. But the approach that we kind of took is working with the restaurant owners, because they don't want to be, like Jodi had said, we added some language where we were able to make it a stipulation where if they do get in violation, they could pull the outdoor permitting. These businesses want to thrive. They're part of our community. We don't want to have such strict regulations where you can't have music at an establishment. We can't have events because people are complaining about noise. We want to find that balance. So I think it's going to be a lot of discussion, a lot of input from a lot of different stakeholders. But I think the goal that we should be trying to establish is coming up with some language that simplifies our current noise ordinance, but allows the city to function, provide entertainment, let work get done at reasonable hours, and allow residents to have reasonable expectation of quiet and peace in their own homes. So I'll stop right there. I see there's a hand open, but again, I just want to take a moment to thank this board for bringing up this issue. And one other point I'd like to make is that I think what people get confused with is we have a large volume of complaints from a small group of residents, oftentimes. So it's really, I wouldn't say, Jodi, would you agree with me on that? It's not really... Yes, I said many duplicates or from one person. Yeah, so I think that's something that we keep in mind as we go through this. But it's just something that I just wanted to make sure was said in this forum. Thank you, Director Derubis. Representative Dittolo, did you have a question for the floor zero, sir? Yeah, thank you. It's going to be through you to Director Derubis. I'm kind of in the same boat with you, Director Derubis, and kind of on the enforcement end. And I think when we're going through it and just to clarify, if police get a 911 call or on the routine line, those noise complaints are going to be a low priority. And I don't know if I maybe need to reach out to Brian at ECC. Is there a way of like, hey, we've gotten four noise complaints for the same area. Does that at the ECC re-prioritize that complaint? Or does it still stay on the bottom of that board for PD? That was kind of my first question. Just to kind of see on the enforcement end. Well, I think it's situational based. So it depends on the circumstances. I know that's kind of a generic response, but it's all going to depend on the circumstances. What's the nature of the complaint? What's the location of the complaint? And then oftentimes after hours, the health department's not staff. So that's why when you read the ordinance, it's both the health department and the chief of police have the authority to enforce that. So if the police get called to say a loud house party, oftentimes when the police do show up and engage the parties, they'll see an immediate clarification of that problem. It'll clear itself up. They'll just stop when the police show up. If say they give that warning and then they leave, if they get a call back in another hour or half hour saying the noise is continuing, then they'll go back again. And then the ordinance isn't the only tool in the toolbox. If it's egregious to the point where it fits the state statute, they could charge breach of peace, disorderly conduct for excessive disruption. So the ordinance is just one of the tools. And it can be used as an effective tool. I think when we talking about like decibel readings and stuff, I think it's chronic problems that we're having. So whether it be an ongoing issue at a specific location or what Jodi, a director Bishop was referring to being proactive with things. So if they're going to have an event at a certain location, we can get out there ahead of time and do some metering to check this decibel levels at that point. But again, this is a very complicated issue in that there's many factors that impact the decibel readings. So they're going to get different decibel readings when there's no crowd there, if they're just testing the equipment. And they're going to get different readings when the crowd shows up. And now you have this ambient noise and as director Bishop stated, nine out of 10 times the ambient noise from a large crowd is going to be over the decibel readings, just that in and of itself. So that's one issue. And another issue is there's a lot of factors that play into the decibel readings. When we were dealing with a lot of noise complaints, whether it be down on the water, where you have an establishment that's playing music and you're getting complaints, like almost no complaints in the immediate area, but two miles away, you're getting bombarded with noise complaints from a certain area because of the way of the buildings that are around it or the noise travels over the water based on what geographical components are around it. With the event in June when we had that big issue, we've had numerous events there. The reason why we had that amount of complaints that night, one of the main factors was that there was a low cloud ceiling. So when there's low cloud cover, the noise goes up, hits the cloud cover and it goes outward. So that's why we're getting complaints from Mill River, not from the immediate area, but most of those complaints were up in Turner River all the way up in Bull's Head because it was following the cloud cover and going out. And that's where the majority of our complaints were coming from. So there's a lot of different issues and factors in that. Yeah. And I think, thank you. And I really appreciate that. And it's a bit of me thinking out loud is I think when we're going through this process and looking at this noise ordinance, that's something we need to think in mind. And I think having an aspect, especially for events or downtown when we know there's a higher chance of there being a noise issue of ensuring that in this ordinance and part of going and getting the permit for an event is ensuring that, and I think maybe Director Bishop, correct me if I'm wrong, is if the health inspectors are there with those decibel readers for the events and have the authority say, "Hey, you're over this, right? Give them a warning. And then if you're not going, we're going to shut you down." You know, I think that's kind of my, the fear is kind of how do we make it an enforceable thing? I think it's great that we want to look into changing it, but also making sure that there's ways to hold people accountable, whether at an event, and especially the events we know are going to have a higher instance of noise, or there may be an issue that someone's going to be complaining about and trying to be proactive rather than reactive. Just food for thought, I yield. Thank you, Representative Ditto. Representative Bedro. Yeah, thank you. So both, after the Mill River event, I reached out to both Director Durobus and Director Bishop. I'm not sure if you guys recall the conversations, but we touched on some of the same points they discussed today. And one of the things that really stood out for me from those and from my own review of the existing ordinance is that we essentially have written into it two different ways that you can get out of it. There are exceptions and there are, as we've mentioned before, variances or waivers. And so an exception is something where it's just written into the ordinance that if you're doing this, the ordinance doesn't apply. And so the example of that is from aircraft on, I think, an FAA approved flight plan. The Norris Ordinance does not apply to those at all. And if you're in an exception, you can be as loud as you want with no waiver. And then the other way, which we referred to before, is the waivers or the variances. And in that process, it goes to Director Bishop and you need to get that signed off and approved. And there's requirements on that. I believe the two requirements in the ordinance are that it can't damage the environment and it can't be a threat to health. I don't remember exactly how they phrased that, but those are kind of the two standards set in there. And so I think one of the issues, there are the other issues with cloud cover and all that we alluded to, but one of the issues that I have in the current ordinance is that these permanent events are in the exceptions category. So we mentioned before that now we are asking them to get waivers for those permanent events, but they don't have to under the ordinance. Under the ordinance, they can, as long as they have a permit, do whatever they want. And I'm sure everyone recalls at the Mill River, one of the things was people were calling the police and the police were saying there's nothing we could do. It's a permanent event. And under the ordinance, that is true because a permanent event is completely exempt. And so I actually, I had drafted a language that would remove the permanent events exception so that every permanent event would have to get a variance. I still think that is an appropriate change. The reason why I haven't submitted that to steering is because we're taking this kind of broader effort to shore up the noise ordinance generally, which I think is a great idea and fully support. But I do want to emphasize to the committee and my fellow board members that when we take up this ordinance, I really think we should consider whether it, what exceptions actually make sense to be exceptions as in statutory exceptions versus what sorts of things should have to go through the administration and should have to get waivers. Because I think, at least to me, something like a concert is very clearly something that should be in waiver territory rather than exception territory, where it should have to go through a process where they say this is how we're going to be, this is when it's going to happen, this is when it's going to stop. So that's just some food for thought on any revisions to the ordinance that we do. I'm not planning to submit that steering anymore, because as I said, we're taking a broader look at this ordinance, which I think will lead to a better ordinance long term. But I really want to emphasize that one aspect that I think we need to need to have addressed and I'll yield my time there. Thank you, Representative Bedro. If no one has a response to that, I just wanted to let Sheila know that Director Canones jumped on. I'm not trying to put you on the spot, Director Canones, but a while back we had a question about refuge pickup. There's a couple people that had the question. Was Representative Hughes still here? Yes. Did you want to ask your question? I'm not trying to blindside him as soon as he got on the meeting, but I figured we'd take this opportunity so we wouldn't have to have another meeting. Yeah, totally. Through you to Director Canones, I wanted to ask about the refuge pickup, the trash pickup. I believe it's allowed to start at 4 a.m. is my understanding. I wanted to first off know if that's correct, and then kind of just hear your thoughts on if that's the best time for pickup downtown where it's densely populated. I have a constituent who moved to Stanford recently, really like Stanford, but one of the challenges he and his girlfriend have is the trash pickup. He said it's starting anywhere from 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., and when he talked to the trash hauler, they said that the noise ordinance permits them to pick up as early as 4 a.m. I just didn't know if there was any thought to kind of mitigate that early pickup time in densely populated areas. My only thought on that is there's a lot of slamming of dumpsters that goes on, and that's a lot louder than when you're in the suburban parts of Stanford where it's a single bin. Director, are you there? Okay, sorry. I'm here. Are you all set, Representative Hughes? Yes, yes. Sorry, that was a bit long-winded. You're fine. Thank you for the question, and I think kind of you touch on something in terms of the distinction between the more densely populated neighborhoods versus maybe up north where things are a little bit more spread out. I think just by logic you're gonna impact more people. I think one of the biggest factors to having a 4 a.m. start time is the influence that a later start time would have on traffic flow and the safety of our laborers and collection staff, so that's kind of been the main motivation for that early start time. We do try and stagger times where we think traffic is going to be less impactful in kind of the less dense neighborhoods of the city, but things are somewhat of a trade-off, and in this regard, I think the safety of staff and the residents commuting has kind of taken precedent, which is why we have kind of a history of starting at the end of this. We would like to thank the board of representatives for your support and for their support in this effort. We would like to thank the board of representatives for their support and for their support. We would like to thank the board of representatives for their support and for their support. We would like to thank the board of representatives for their support and for their support. We would like to thank the board of representatives for their support and for their support. We would like to thank the board of representatives for their support and for their support. I don't know, maybe we can look at it, but I appreciate the question. Representative Pedro, did you still have your hand up or is this stuff from last time? Just up from last time, sorry. Not a problem. But is there any, I don't see any other hands raised. I think the only thing we didn't really touch for the most part was parks, music in the parks. Director Murray was not able to be with us tonight, but I talked to him briefly and I can share some of his comments with the board. But he was looking at very much a hard stop time for amplified music in parks. So I don't know what that number is, whether it's 9 p.m. or 10 p.m., but at this time, no music in any park. So it's not 9 o'clock in this park and 8 o'clock this park and Scalzi's. So it's a way of, I just wanted to share some thoughts. I'm not saying that's set in stone right now. But real quick, Representative Felicia, I'm going to open it up really to Ben, who's joining us from the Parks and Rights Commission. He might have a lot better information than I do if you want to go ahead and share your thoughts, Ben. Thank you for having me on. Can you hear me? I'm on the highway driving home from New Haven, so I just want to make sure. Just be careful, man. I know it's an off-street. Oh, we love you, but it's, you know. We can fly it with all roadway laws. So here's the deal with parks, at least at the parks and park land that's controlled by the Parks and Rights Department under our jurisdiction. We have a separate set of park rules for anybody who puts in a special event permit or any sort of event permit. As you may know, because I'm pretty sure that the drafting of those rules did involve the board of reps and it might have been the Parks and Rights Committee before it was consolidated. But one of the first rules is no amplified music in parks. So, that makes our life a little bit hard. I think that if we had a clearer, more robust generalist audience, as we're talking now with very clear standards, with late-time cutoffs, and then a potential revisit to our rules, that might be the most practical way to deal with things, because, and I did just, I heard the discussion on exceptions or exemptions versus variances. I think we see two different things, or a variety of different things. We see things like sporting events, things like regularly occurring community meetings or events in parks. Those have permits and the rules apply to them. We also have permits for discrete, specific date or time period events, like a concert. The same rules apply to those permits to us as well. What's interesting for us as the Parks and Rights Commission is, we've had the Senior Center come in front of us to do a walk around Cove Island Park, and they've wanted to do a warm-up with their members. And they've said, some of the members can't hear so well, so we'd like to do an amplified PA system to do warm-ups under our current rules. That wouldn't be allowed. So we have, as the Parks and Rights Commission, been trying to be thoughtful, just like Director Moody said, as far as time periods, very limited duration of where and when sound can be played. We have taken no amplified music quite literally, because we even have folks who want to come play acoustic music, like a keyboard or a piano or a guitar in the parks, and we have concerns that that might violate our parks rules. I think that the parks rules could be modified, the rules for permitting in parks could be modified and potentially a little bit more flexible if we had a clear, what you're working on now, which is noise ordinances. But it is a clear noise ordinance. It is something that comes before us often, even when folks are, you know, not in a good community buy-in for event, there are also neighbors who are concerned about the sound. And as we've heard tonight, that's even worse in areas where sound travels with greatest ease, like down near the water, so we're particularly concerned about that. At the same time, we'd love the ability to activate the parks in compliance with the special permit rules and the municipal code. We would love to have this thoughtful consideration, the ability to have concerts or music that is amplified in the park, which right now violate our special permit. But I do appreciate everything that everyone else has said, like when things are getting called in and complaints are being made, it's not always coming directly from the park, you might be hearing it elsewhere. And we are very, we are concerned about not only the directing of budding neighbors and residential properties, but anybody who would be within reasonably are shocked. Does that make sense? Do you have any questions for me? I don't. Is there anyone on the floor have any questions for Parks and Recs Commission? I appreciate the explanation, Ben, and Drive Safe. I appreciate you joining us and thank you so much. I appreciate what you're doing because it could allow us to possibly, and we might be coming back to you to do a revisiting of the special permit rules upon the redrafting of the noise ordinance. Because I think that we could sort of do it so that they dovetail together. So thank you for having me. Absolutely. Thank you for coming. That's really the big couple of things that I wanted to hit on, and the purpose of this review item. I think what we all know is that we are a large city. We have people that don't like any music. We have people that go to concerts, so we have to find that balance. We want to get our roads paved. Maybe we start a little bit early, and so we can take advantage of, you know, the daylight instead of having sitting, you know, people, idling vehicles and, you know, waiting to start at eight when they could start a little bit earlier. So I think economically there's a lot of advantages in getting our ordinance in line with DEEP. So I think with Director DeRubus and Director Bishop, we're saying, is using DEEP as a starting point, maybe a guideline, stealing some best practices from other neighboring communities, with the also knowing that, you know, not other communities have, you know, some of the events that Stanford does. And, you know, we still need to be, you know, a fun town that people want to, you know, go out and have fun on a weekend. So I think we can do it, you know, so that's the idea. And I really think that, you know, after 40 years, a lot has changed in Stanford, and we need to go back and take a look at, you know, how our noise ordinance needs to change as well. I apologize that I'm a little under the weather and I sound a little hoarse, but I appreciate you guys and gals all bearing with me for tonight. So the intent here is to close out this item, make our report, and then we'll reintroduce it as a new item. So you have a review item, a resolution and an ordinance. We'll reintroduce it as the ordinance once we have a fairly put together document that people are familiar with and we're not having 25 meetings together, you know, redlining everything. That might happen. I'm just saying that that's kind of where I'm coming from. So I will, I'll reach out to the other members afterwards and I just want to, are there any other questions before, before we close it out, I don't see anybody. If anybody has any questions, please send me a note. Otherwise, I really appreciate it. And at this time, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Senator Sanford, really quick though, Representative Dela Cruz has a question. I can't see you. Representative Dela Cruz, go ahead. Thank you Dan. I was just wondering, what process do you see for getting the ideas and recommendations to you, let's say, so that there is then something to look at when the item is reintroduced. Yeah, I think, let me talk with John offline and I think the idea would be is, you know, if you if you have an idea you want to incorporate, send it to us, we might get the same kind of idea, and then we can kind of put all that together. And then, and then send it from there for for legal review and then we can submit and then once it goes in the legislative record we can, we can, you know, go through the normal process and stuff like that. If you have, if you have any ideas I would reach out to myself and john and just include us both so that we're, we're tracking it. Let me say that I fully agree with director, the rubies that the 20 plus page document needs to be reduced to maybe two or three pages, you know, I have read that document several times and I read it tonight but this afternoon before the meeting. At times I couldn't make heads or tails of what I was reading. It was so convoluted so simplification is certainly an objective. Thank you. I will reach out to you. Thank you then. Yes, yes, let's talk and I'd love to hear some of your ideas Virgil so well, without further ado I will entertain a motion to adjourn the time is 813pm. So move. Is there a second. Second. All right everyone you guys have a great night and a great weekend. Take care. All right, take care. Thank you.