County Commissioners Put the Brakes On Adopting a New Noise Ordinance

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Members of the Lewis County Board of Commissioners chose to take a slight change of direction regarding a vote to adopt public disturbance ordinance during their regular meeting Monday morning. 

County Commissioner Gary Stamper formally announced the tabling of a public hearing to adopt an enforcement program for public disturbance caused by excessive noise. The hearing has been rescheduled to Dec. 30 due to that fact that fireworks weren’t part of the discussion in adding new parameters to the county code. 

Senior Civil Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Cullen Gatten advised that a public notice for Monday’s hearing didn’t include the topic of fireworks in terms of how civilian complaints on the matter would be handled by the Sheriff’s Office. 

“We would rather be transparent about this to provide people that would speak on what to do with fireworks have an opportunity to do so,” said Gatten. 

Details of the ordinance have been discussed at a number of meetings over the past few months, including an Oct. 15 meeting at which county attorneys and the Board of County Commissioners deliberated on language to combat high noise levels that wouldn’t require law enforcement to produce decibel readings to issue fines. 



The clause on noise decibel readings reportedly came about in response to Sheriff Rob Snaza’s proposal to make changes to the County Code on public disturbance since his officers were able to dole out fines to owners of barking dogs, but couldn’t cite noisy neighbors. 

At the October conference, Gatten noted: “The noise would have to be heard from the public roadway or from an adjacent property by the sheriff. Obviously, if the complainant said he heard it from a public roadway, thyen the sheriff’s office could cite them for that. Someone would have to come in and actually testify to enforce that piece.” 

When asked by The Chronicle if the Board of County Commissioners would actually vote on the new ordinance to add a new chapter to the County Code on Dec. 30, Commissioner Bobby Jackson replied that while that might be the case, he wasn’t exactly certain of it. 

“We just felt like it wouldn’t be complete unless we had some level of information that addressed that (fireworks) issue,” he said.