City Council - workshop

Okay. Are you ready now? Okay. All right. We'll go ahead and get started with our work session for this evening. First thing we need to do is approval of the September 10th, 2026 work session minutes. May I have a move for approval?

Motion.

Thank you.

Second.

Thank you. Are there any comments or questions or? Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Okay, thanks, Justin. We heard you. All right, now we are going to move into our noise ordinance discussion. Everybody should have gotten a copy of what is being proposed by staff, correct? That's correct, Darren? Yeah, okay.

Yeah, so basically what you have here, the first portion of what the handout provided, Sarah put this together and kind of put it together from several cities that she had been researching. I think it actually goes all the way back to Jackie when she started looking into this topic. And so the idea, though, I think the biggest thing that it does is it adds a maximum decibel level. And what it does, though, and that would be on page three, if you look down there at paragraph T, It talks about excessive noise during restful periods. So between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., the pressure level of sound or noise generated measured in a weighted decibels shall not exceed maximum double decibel levels. at the property line for the receiving property is set forth in following table. And so what it does is in the table, it takes the zoning districts on the left-hand side, and Jonathan's gonna give you a comment about that here in a little bit as well too, or some other comments. But then what it does is also look at what the maximum decimal level would be at the edge of those properties in those districts. So you can see as it goes up, the closer you get to commercial, or starting with R1, I think, John, is the single family, and then moving on up to the commercial and industrial uses, and that's when you get the higher numbers. but you're really not talking about that much of a difference. I mean, well, depending on what the situation is, but you do have a decibel difference starting at 65 going up to 80, and that would be at the edge of the property of the receiving end. So if somebody complained about loud noise and they asked the police department to come take a look at it, the police department would stand there at the edge of that property and take that measurement to see if it if it met this criteria. So that's basically it. We did, I shared this with council. This is expected to be just a discussion item for a while. I know that this has been a topic for a long time. We're not asking for anything to get completely taking care of tonight or whatever but really open up the discussion i know this has been on gina's radar for a while for me to go ahead and get done i didn't have to do it on a saturday by the way thank you um but yeah no well it helps when you got lawyer friends so anyway they had done a lot of the research already for us and so we were able to go ahead and put that together uh in talking with on uh staff with some of the comments that we've had Well, I think I'm going to let Jonathan go up first, and he can go ahead, and he's got a few additions or some tweaks that he'd like to see added to this as well.

Thank you, Mayor, Council. So, yeah, Darren introed that, and in reviewing just a couple of items that I wanted to point out in the new sections in the table specifically, one item to consider is is currently in the draft it has our RMM missing middle zoning multifamily district listed as 65 decibels which is the same threshold as the single-family districts and multifamily and I know this is all still up for a lot of discussion but just pointing out the fact that the multifamily goes up five decibels at 70 so just keep in mind right now that missing middle is is treated as a single the same level of single family as opposed to multifamily, 65 instead of 70. Does that make sense? I just wanted to point that out. That is a... And the purpose for...

I mean, do you think it should be different? I mean...

I mean, it is a multifamily district. I mean, so... I think it would make more sense to put it on the same level as R5, but that's for you all to discuss. For consistency, yeah.

Just for reference, where is the decibel level at all of this with the county ordinance that's out there now? It depends. That's what I'm asking. Okay.

Well, yeah, so there's not a straight answer. So some of it is higher, some of it is lower. County measures daytime versus nighttime. County measures industrial versus commercial. It's just not structured the same. It's higher in some instances. But again, it's...

My understanding, they take multiple readings over a certain period of time as well, too, when they do those types of tests. This would be a simpler, we're also trying to keep the police department, you know, because they would be the enforcers of this code to try to make it as simple as possible for them, yet still be effective. And I do have some comments that they had given me as well whenever Jonathan gets done, but I don't want to, Jonathan, I think, has got some more.

i just curious where we're at at county level to where so we're trying to match or exceed or not in the same table that has the zoning districts in the maximum decibels um again something we identified after this draft was sent out was it it doesn't have nuance for residential property in B2. So it has B2, which is our downtown district listed as a higher decibel level currently in the draft. But we do have, even just across the street, three buildings that are zoned B2 that are only residential. So there are portions of the B2 district that can have residential buildings. So staff would recommend building in some nuance to that where it separates out residential development in B2 versus mixed or non-residential development in B2.

So just to add on to that, Jonathan, you could do like B2 residential only or something along those lines and lower that decibels, what you're,

Yeah, that's what I'm insinuating. Yeah. And I don't know, I haven't given enough thought to think of whether that makes more sense within that table or if there's a proceeding clause to the table that I think it can be, we can flesh that out exactly the clearest way to differentiate that. But I think at least for council's consideration as to whether or not you intend to distinguish between residential and B2 versus mixed use and or commercial and B2. And the last piece on the table, again, I understand why it was probably left out, but there is one more zoning district, and I don't think it's in your draft. Yours ends at I-1, right? We have a F1, which is floodplain district. It's only the Green Tree Park and Marshall, the KAA. So likelihood of needing that, well, maybe I won't. I don't know what the likelihood of needing that is. However, again, for consistency, I would recommend that we add that district. And it's a non-residential district, so it could fall within that higher range as well. but i would recommend adding it and we can do that if the council sees that as appropriate and my last item is at the very end um which has to do so sorry in in small roman numeral five um that starts on the bottom of page four um or i guess is at the bottom of page four um i would recommend considering um How this works, and we've talked about this a little bit, so it's not groundbreaking, but it's not currently addressed for mixed-use properties in how noise is addressed when the generator is on the ground floor. and there are people above. So it's because it's measured currently. We all talk about measuring at property lines. This is drafted measuring at the receiver's property line. When you're part of the same property, that doesn't exist. So there are a couple ways to handle it, at least. I'm sure you all will think of more as well. But we had with the Ivy Cafe proposal recently, we had that same proposal where you might consider whether you need to treat people in the same building differently than people across the street or how that is. I do know, as Council Member Schaffer asked a question about a reference to county in their ordinance, I've been told that, for instance, county won't go through or into somebody's house to measure, right? So, you know, if somebody lives above a commercial area, I wouldn't expect us to go into their unit and measure at their window or something like that. But anyway, those are the items that I wanted to bring to your attention.

Some other items that we did receive from the Special Business District, they were concerned about... making sure that the language was strong enough to exempt those types of activities that are either sponsored by the downtown district or the city. So for example, in that paragraph five, sounds generated from crowds at festivals, concerts, and activities operating under temporary permits issued by the city that's the language that we had within it but there was some that they they they wanted to i guess maybe have a little bit stronger language so they felt like they were covered under that a little bit better um as well as um let me think of what their other comments were sorry um They were just asking mainly about implementation, about the enforcement measures. Are they going to be by a trained city employee using properly calibrated decibel meter? In talking with Sarah, not this Sarah, the other Sarah this afternoon, she had addressed that no, that the police would be, her impression as far as interpretation or enforcement of this would be, just like any one of us could put an app on their phone and then they'd use a decibel meter at that. So if there was a complaint, that's what they would use. It didn't have to be some technical, real technical instrument to go ahead and do that. Then I guess the couple of items that the police department had, they had a question about how many readings would they be necessary to go ahead and take. I guess technically under this, only one, but I would imagine they would probably do that more than that ongoing problem on a given night. And then you also had, they had a question about sporting events, you know, announcer speakers playing music prior to game. Most of that activity would take place prior to the 9 p.m. that's in the ordinance. However, they also asked that the city consider moving it to 10 p.m. They thought that that would be more reasonable from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. as far as enforcement goes or to put in the code. Those are the comments that I've had since we shared it with staff. And so for police, that was from police. Correct. Yep.

I have some broad comments, but go ahead. We're going to say something.

Go ahead, Gina.

One, is some of this current ordinance, what we have currently, can we get a red line copy of what the changes are so we can discern?

And I'll take a crack at what, based on my discussion with Sarah, I think everything until you get to T. Okay. Everything where? Everything until you get to paragraph T on page three.

Oh, it's already in?

This is already in. Oh, okay. These are all things that are already in your code today.

And anything beyond T is not?

Correct.

Okay.

So T, but I'll validate.

So our current code uses et cetera that many times? Apparently. Okay. That's an interesting legal term, is it not?

I'm sorry, what term?

I said et cetera. Oh, et cetera. We like horn signaling devices, et cetera. Radios, televisions, phonographs, that's a good word, et cetera. Some people might not know what that is. Animals, birds, et cetera. So it might be a good idea to take away some of the more ambiguity or whatever words that we don't know whatever and the other thing is there are um um Oh, there is reasonable, the reasonable use of amplifiers. I mean, how do we, again, a lot of the, not to wordsmith it now, but to say something's reasonable is a judgment call. And typically I would think that would be hard for anybody to enforce or make a discern decision about. So one, just knowing which are the things that are new, what are the things that maybe aren't new and need to be discussed, and what the source was to get to those. And just, you know, I've done a lot of checking other places as well. Town and Country actually has a noise permit application that might deal with some of the SBDs and others concerned about if some of this gets too binding or restrictive. You know, we just don't know until we finalize it. There may be another process for that. And I also see some municipalities have code enforcement and police enforce. So for us to look at potentially, you know, when we have code enforcement during the week, might be able to do that and police can do it in the off. I mean, again, some other ways of looking at enforcement and then the consequences of are what happens if you don't meet our code on this. So I have other more detailed, but now that we've also passed for the Ivey, a piece about potentially removing their sup if the you know or whoever has it um in the event that the the noise disturbs what however that's written um we have that with with another one of the restaurants and so how we deal with those outside of what may come forth in this So, you know, we still have, you know, a Billy G's four hands issue separate from this. And again, some of the decibel readings. And if we we take it at the complainant property, some might be, you know, a couple hundred feet away and some might be right next door. So that's kind of a. Um, inconsistent application. I would think of this rule and other municipalities I've seen to a fifty feet from the, you know, offending place or something. They have something that's consistently applied. Um, so a lot of things that, you know, I'm just so grateful to finally see something come through. But I do think there's a lot of room to not only update what we currently have, but also strengthen to deal with some of our current issues. The other one is the repetitive noise. You know, that's kind of a new thing that has taken hold in communities to some degree. And I don't know if we're going to just be silent on that or if that's something else to throw in.

Under Section 1770 and the B, it talks about the comfort of neighboring inhabitants and louder volume than necessary for convenience of hearing. For the person who's in the room vehicle chamber and i'd like to include outside we had a resident that was living next door to some adult child of the couple that would go outside and blast his music so i'd like to include outs outside as part of that as well. And then, of course, the device operated by engine exhaust or use of signaling devices. I mean, is there in here one of the things, and I really would like to see us... crack down on even more. I know we're doing a little bit, but these cars that are driving around town so loud. Um, I think that the police occasionally are doing something, but I'd like to see that. And I think that's, um, that's in here. Um, And I think since we're looking at it, all of this, I think 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday to allow construction and what have you, I think 8 p.m. is too late. I think we should look. Which paragraph? I'm sorry, that's J under the same one, second page J. And I think 7 a.m. on Saturdays is too early. 7 a.m. Monday through Thursday is fine, and maybe Friday as well. But Saturday, I think 7 a.m. is too early. It maybe should match what we're saying for Sunday, 9 a.m.

The issues of summertime and the heat, I think, on that is one of the issues. And you're going to get a lot of pushback from construction people on the 7 a.m. because they like to start at 7 a.m. and a lot of times be gone by 2, especially on Saturdays, especially the roofers. They want to be out of there before the sun hits. Oh, yeah.

Oh, you want to go earlier?

I don't want to go earlier.

I'm just saying that we agree with that. I think especially with the heat as it's been, I mean, most people who work outside tried to shift their hours to be in the cooler morning hours in order to, from an OSHA perspective, I also believe that there's some regulations around that. So I think we have to be cognizant that we could prevent that. even our own workers from being able to go do their work. So I would be cognizant of that. It would be interesting from Chris's perspective, too, of like, when could we start street repairs and things like that? Because they would have to abide by that. So I don't know.

See, and then under O, though, pile drivers, hammers, that the operation is that they can't operate the operation from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. Right. That doesn't doesn't match.

There are some cities that give, I mean, obviously, if you have emergency repairs that need to be done, you have another watermageddon, so to speak, as I've heard here. I know, that's what I'm just saying. Those are exempt.

City work, I think, in general. Okay. 1769 excavation repair degrees.

Thank you for pointing that out, Jonathan. Thank you.

So since these are current, have you gotten complaints or concerns from any of the roofers and all that, that these are too late to start in the morning? I can't speak for all departments, but I have not received any complaints. So some of that, and again, it's good to open this up. Like, is this even still too early? You know, but I'm not sure that going earlier. is going to be something direction we want to take.

I wasn't wanting to advocate for that. I just wanted to make sure we didn't push it to later on Fridays. I was more concerned on the Friday, Saturday.

And this doesn't, that O doesn't have days. It's only, it's, I guess it's every day. It says the operation from...

It's inconsistent for sure.

Yeah. And then one right below it, blowers, does that include leaf blowers?

so this was discussed a few years ago too and i think one of the key from what i recall and i apologize i'm trying to find it exactly but um

And maybe it is specific to the constructed section J. So just keep in mind the, because like lawn equipment was brought up before when construction hours were talked about. And it's mowers and all that stuff is not construction. Okay. Right. So those are not included. So lawn mowing and things like that and leaf blowers. have not been considered covered by Jay specifically, and I would assume not by any other section because it was always discussed that that type of work could still be done outside of those hours.

Thank you.

May I? Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. So I have a couple of the same thoughts that have already been placed here today. I think knowing that some of this is already in code, it would be interesting to know what year they went in. You know, horns and signaling devices in A under 1770. Mayor, I agree with you for the convenient hearing for the person who's in the room. Well, what is convenient hearing? 11 p.m. So inconsistency with hours. At the bottom of C, which is on to the top of page two, loudspeakers can only be made by the announcer in person. without the aid of a mechanical device. In today's world, we have people who speak with a mechanical device. And so do we eliminate them from being able to be an announcer at an event? So it just seems like there's some updating of this. A steam whistle or horn, do we have any of those in society anywhere anymore?

They have one down the street from me that blows every time.

But is it a steam whistle?

Yes. It's a barge.

It's a barge whistle. But is it steam generated? No. So isn't that what a steam whistle is? Maybe it is. I don't know. That's my question. It's only during Blues final games when they score. At least you know it's limited. But the steam whistles are probably steamboat time period. And train time periods when they ran on coal. And I don't think, so updating. So I, destruction of bales, I think of straw. Now maybe that would also pertain to boxes at a grocery store. Same thing on the hours in J, going to 8, inconsistencies. If we go down to... L, hawkers and peddlers, shouting and crying at peddlers, hawkers, and vendors, which disturbs the peace and quiet of the neighborhood. By whose standard? So I think there's a lot here that could be updated. N, transportation of metal rails. Do we do that anymore? So those are some of the things I'm looking at. Yes, I noticed that leaf blowers wasn't included in here. Obviously, they can be annoying to be depending on what somebody does with their leaf blower. Questions for the zoning the decibels. I think I understand that if I'm in the B category, my noise can be 80 decibels at the property line of the person receiving the noise so i appreciate the comment that maybe a 50 feet from the entity because otherwise if you live next door to a loud music place in that district is going to be different than if your home is two or three blocks away so the receiving person is going to have a different experience um i'm not quite sure i appreciate honoring worship bells and chimes but we're going to let them start at five in the morning that seems a little early um I appreciate Jonathan looking at floodplain noise, which I think you're saying should be 80. I don't see anything in here that, again, was already brought up repetitive noise or the impulse sound that we're having with our pickleball courts. In no place is that addressed at all. I think this is a great place to start. I would like to request that we put a committee together of people from our community to come in and look at this. So there is community buy-in, there's community participation. Maybe we bring people in who have specific complaints and ask them to work on this with us. so that there's compromise across the board. I am certainly not a noise expert. I don't know if anybody on staff is, and I think a collaborative process would be an easier sell for the community. My recommendation. Thank you, Mayor.

Mayor. I would say, you know, I think Gina and everyone has brought up some really great points. I am concerned that we're not addressing the newest one, which is the pickleball. I would say we need to address that. One of my bigger concerns is obviously enforcement. And if we've had ordinances in place that we can't figure out how to enforce, then is this the time to think about what do we need? If that's the issue, do we need to think about what are we going to make sure that is enforceable? Because just having ordinances in place that no one's going to enforce or we don't know how or we don't do it seems we're just putting things in paper so that we can say we did it and nothing's happening so i'm not a big fan of putting laws in place that aren't enforceable and aren't being enforced i just am not i think it's a waste of everybody's time so i would ask that a part of this be and i just don't feel like this addresses the enforcement side So I would like to see something or a discussion around that. And there's no one here on the enforcement here.

Does that work? I mean, when we put things in place, then is there a separate manual that no, my guess would be is that it's, it's one it's, it's complaint driven.

Nobody's going out looking to see if somebody is operating a pile driver. It's all complaint driven. And so then they just go and see what portion of the code that they can possibly go ahead and enforce.

Is it under or whatever?

Correct.

Okay. I guess I'm going to adjust my request to make sure I'm clear. I would like someone from enforcement to come talk to us. So in an open work session, so we can talk about what do we need to do to enforce? We get the complaints on a regular basis, right? This isn't new. And so I would like to understand that because I'd like to know how do I respond to those things? Like what do I encourage them to do? I think it would be helpful to me to be able to guide citizens who may be complaining about something to make sure I even understand what's the right process to do that. And maybe then we publish that and make sure people understand that's happening.

Yeah, enforcement also, but I'm kind of more on the legal side of it. I hear you say people, they'll have like handheld noise-o-meters.

You can get a calibrated decibel reader, but you can also download a simple decibel reader on your phone.

It needs to be calibrated. It needs to be the legal way. Otherwise, it'll be torn apart automatically. by a defense attorney saying it wasn't when was the last time it was calibrated you know doing that whole thing just like similar to a um a breath meter or whatever you use for intoxication breathalyzer thank you but you know it's so you know i got my iphone i'm gonna test it out well you know that that's another you know an enforceability is always an issue but a lot of times just knocking on doors of the neighbors hey quiet down it's midnight keep it down And then it doesn't work.

But, but to that same point, like roofers and that they're usually in and out in a day or two. Yeah. Most neighbors want their roof repaired someday. So we're not, they're usually good assistant thing that like you have a new house going up and you have construction every day. That's a different story. So, and then enforcement side of it for some of the enforcement, uh, That can be attached to a liquor license. So I was told by our previous consular that we had here. Which one?

We've had several.

Yes, we have. Well, his name's back here. So I was told that we can attach a lot. So if we're talking about pickleball enforcement, there's a liquor license there. And we're talking about any of the restaurants, typically there's a liquor license there.

Those are the easy ones to me.

They are. Yeah. But I'm just saying there's, there's a hammer that could be brought down in 30 days, a year out or whatever. But to that point, right. Bring it.

You have those. Why aren't we doing, is that on us or is that on someone else? Like, are we supposed to be the ones doing that enforcement? The council?

I don't know that it would be consulate. I think it would be through our city attorney that's here as our judge. So there's several others that we aren't enforcing either, which is property maintenance. You know, I've got one guy that is screaming all the time. And I'm like, I brought it up. I don't know what else to do. And so unless the guy physically steps out of the house when the police officer is walking by, they're not going to go knock on his door and arrest him. But if he's out, they're going to arrest him for not appearing. So these are the things that have been going on for years. So, again, it's all about enforcement and how you can get it done.

And just to kind of tap on that, I mean, other municipalities have these kinds of meter readings in their laws. So obviously some of them are quasi successful with it. So I wouldn't be so worried that it wouldn't face a legal challenge because It appears others are doing it. And even Town and Country, to the Mayor's concern, has readings allowable for vehicles and vehicles other than motorcycles. And motorcycles allowed it in 82, and vehicles other than that are at 76. So they've even dipped their toe into the vehicle side of this conversation. So... Again, I think if we don't think we can do it, yeah, I guess we should give up. But there are municipalities that have tried to reel this in a little bit. I am concerned that we shouldn't make it hard on whether it's police or code enforcement. And 11 data points to collect when you're taking a reading seems a little... over ambitious in I don't know what if the humidity or temperature is in certain range that reading doesn't count. I mean, I don't know what some of that, why that would be important. And is that a part of a either meet this the code or you don't not based on how hot it is or how warm it is which is i think it changes the decibel though right but but again if we're going to build that in we need to know then you know if they calibrate it they calibrate it um and so that could be part of the calibration process so you know if we get to the point where we're going to talk about readings then we need to use something that we're confident um

that we could be consistent in how we apply the ordinance any more any more discussion on this bring it back we'll work on it with these comments and okay very good um all right next

I think we need to go into closed session, yes.

Next we need to go into closed session. May I have a motion?

Sure, I know.

I was really getting ready to do it, Paul, but you can go ahead.

Okay, thank you. Are we ready for the motion?

Do we need, yes. We'll get a second.

We're proposing closing the meeting RSMO chapter 610.021 legal and real estate. Thank you. A second? Second. Thank you. Roll call.

Mayor Gibbons. Yes. Um, council member Arnold is on the phone, so we cannot participate in a roll call vote. Council member Burkett. Yes. Council member Jack Sedeck. Yes. Council member Lavender. Yes. Council member McLean.

Yes.

Council member Schaefer.

Yes.

Right. We will move downstairs.

Dustin, did you want me to call you in?