The stricter enforcement policy of the noise ordinance has silenced the west side of town, but it hasn’t crashed Court Street’s party.
Captain of the Athens City Police Department Tom Pyle decided to be more proactive in enforcing the current noise ordinance after a controversial amendment to the law with stricter penalties was tabled last spring.
With the proactive approach, officers can warn or cite noisy households or businesses on an on-view basis, instead of waiting for a complaint to be called in. After 10 p.m. weekdays and midnight on weekends, if an officer judges that noise from a household or business can be heard 50 feet away or past the property line, they can take action in form of a warning or citation.
Capt. Pyle hopes the changes in enforcement will lower noise levels so that no stricter ordinance would be necessary, but residents and businesses on Court Street haven’t been affected or seen change.
“It’s impossible to get work done in my apartment during the weekends because I can hear people walking home at all hours during the night after the bars close,” Ohio University senior and Court Street resident Bart Rennels said. “The noise from that is a nuisance but it can’t compare to the noise I hear living above a bar.”
Conversely, Mill Street Resident and OU junior William Bracken has been asked five times the past school year to turn off music at his house and send people home for being too loud.
“It’s inevitable that this town is going to be loud on the weekends, and it doesn’t seem fair that I can get a warning so quickly but someone in an apartment on Court doesn’t have to worry about being too noisy,” Bracken said. “They can’t control the noise uptown, so why are they focusing so much on trying to crash our parties on streets like Mill that can hear all the bar crowds anyway?”
When it comes to bar noise, Capt. Pyle maintains that the only way a bar may get a citation for noise is if tenants living above called it in. However, since the department’s focus right now is maintaining silence in possibly residential areas, bar noise isn’t a top priority.
Manager of Broney’s Alumni Bar Kyle Paradise wasn’t even aware that Court Street and bars fell under the noise ordinance’s jurisdiction.
“We’ve never had issue with the police, or people complaining about noise coming from us,” Paradise said. “I think it would be near impossible for police to ever be able to control the volume of Court when the bars close at 2 a.m., there are just way too many people.”
Chairman of Athens Safety Committee Sherry Coon said that there may be another committee formed regarding noise within the uptown area in the future.
“I view Court Street as a different problem, since we receive complaints about noise from residents living in streets a fair distance from the bar area,” Coon said. “Because of the geography of Athens, the noise reverberates off the mountains and lands somewhere else. We didn’t even discuss uptown when we considered the new ordinance, because it’s seems like a problem above us. ”
For students living on Court Street trying to get work accomplished during the weekend, Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl didn’t offer much sympathy when asked what could be done for uptown residents upset by noise.
“Court Street is the heart of this town on the weekends, and any student that’s been here for a week knows that,” Wiehl said. “It’s a give and take situation if you’re going to live there and that is why the police are taking the action in more residential areas, in hopes of regulating areas where it is actually possible to regulate.”
Even with blaring music, sirens, traffic and drunk banter at all hours in the morning, some students love living on Court Street and are not disheartened by the lack of enforcement of the noise ordinance.
“I can go on my fire escape and people-watch Court Street while looking at the mountains simultaneously,” junior Katelyn Sierzputowski said. “This is the only opportunity I’ll have to be a resident in a city area where the residents are preponderantly my age. Yes it’s obnoxiously loud, but it’s an experience, and I’d prefer it stay the way it is than be quiet.”
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