ISLE OF WIGHT
Isle of Wight’s Board of Supervisors has tabled a proposed revision to the county’s noise ordinance that would have required sheriff’s deputies to use a decibel standard rather than the current “reasonable person” wording when issuing citations for excessive noise. The decision to shelve the proposed changes came during a work session held on Thursday evening.

The board had previously discussed changing the county’s noise ordinance at a work session on Dec. 1, 2016, after it was brought to the board’s attention that in 2009 the Virginia Supreme Court had struck down the “reasonable person” standard for noise ordinances as unenforceable. County Attorney Mark Popovich said he believed the county’s ordinance, despite its current language still using the “reasonable person” standard, was still enforceable, but that he would not be the one deciding that if the county were ever to attempt to prosecute somebody for a noise violation.

Popovich added that, following the board’s discussion in December, the Isle of Wight County Sheriff’s Office had obtained bids on the decibel readers that they would need to purchase in order to enforce a decibel standard. The lowest bid for devices which met all 28 standards Virginia imposes for decibel readers used by law enforcement officers was from a company called Techni-Tool. Each unit would cost $360 and the acoustic calibration device needed to keep the units in working order would cost $325. When factoring in the cost of carrying cases, delivery costs, the total estimated cost for the units came out to be between $20,000 and $30,000, plus an additional cost for training officers to use the new equipment.

Newport District Supervisor William McCarty raised concerns that sheriff’s deputies would only be able to get an accurate reading if the noise was occurring when the deputy happened to be present at the site of a complaint, arguing that there is no way for the devices to measure what had been occurring prior to arrival.

Smithfield District Supervisor Dick Grice suggested tabling the changes after arguing that the equipment needed to enforce the proposed new ordinance was not budgeted and that there was no point in passing an ordinance that would be unenforceable without funding.

The board also discussed making changes to the county’s ordinance concerning temporary signs per a request from McCarty to the county’s staff to review the ordinance to make it more business friendly. McCarty had argued that the county’s current ordinance did not give businesses operating out of shopping centers the same freedom to display advertisements as businesses operating out of a standalone building.

The revised ordinance, as it is currently written, would allow any business to display two flags and one sign for up to 30 days with the requirement that at the end of that period the sign and flags would come down for at least another 30 days. It also increases the allowed size of window signs to 20 percent of the window’s surface, and removes the setback requirements unique to the Newport District, using the same three-tier system for sign placement as the rest of the county instead.

Grice asked whether the revised ordinance would consider window shades with logos or images as signs, to which Assistant Director of Planning and Zoning Richard Rudnicki responded that the ordinance could be worded either way depending on whether the board wanted or did not want to consider window shades as signs.

The board concluded their work session by going into closed session to discuss the performance of a specific public appointee.