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all sources." That does not exclude human voices. That includes human voices. People do not filter out voice frequencies. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. Our hearing is centered on a frequency band. We don't hear low noises, dog whistles. The frequencies we hear best are vocal frequencies. We're designed to hear voices. In fact, because hearing other people speak in an unwanted manner is so annoying, many noise ordinances include a 5dB penalty for noise ordinances. In other words, the limit for noise from voices is lower than from other noises. Finally, staff has stated that Danville, Dublin, Livermore and San Ramon "do not specifically regulate what the dB limit unamplified human voices." Well, guess what, those ordinances don't have any dB limits. They only have qualitative things to decide what a noise nuisance is. So again, it's not necessarily tied to a decibel level. It can be tied to disruption; in this case, the noise you've heard about from the Millers is very disruptive to them in the life that they have enjoyed for so many years before the parties began and they're simply asking you to take that into account in your positions. Thank you very much. Yinghai Lu: Hi folks. I live on Sequoia Court and its kind of right across the road from the Masons' structure. Basically I can see their backyard and the structure with no buffer. I'm here to just say that I'm very concerned about the recommendation that they are allowing outdoor activities. I'm very concerned about the noise level because as far as I know, there's no way to control or no regulation of human voices. I've lived in our community for about three years in a very quiet neighborhood and the one day that somebody has like six people in the backyard and has a party, you notice it. It's not very disturbing but you notice that because it's not quiet. So my point is if you have not 6 people but 100 people in the backyard partying, just the voices would destroy you. Maybe we live far enough that we would be disturbed less, but for the Millers I think that's detrimental and I really hope you guys can reconsider the outdoor activity regulation. That's all. Mingying Fan: Thank you Commissioners. I just wanted to share some points from the perspective of an expectant mother. Yinghai and I are expecting our first baby this August and we're both full -time employees so we can imagine that probably the most time we spend with our kids will be during the weekends and as I am expecting I always imagine that during the weekend I can play with my baby and maybe singing a lullaby to him and him gradually falling asleep, but with this project going on with all of these events around our house, I don't know how this picture is going to look like. So noise is definitely a key concern for us and I definitely agree with Greg that I'm not an acoustic expert but I know noises don't only come from music. It also includes human voices and what if some people start to play something not musical at all? For example, if someone plays the drums, is that allowed outdoors? I mean, by nature, you just cannot control the sound of a party. It's just the nature of the party, and the other point is I don't know if you use an app called NextDoor. It's a community app and people share information with the community. I think there's one item under each person's profile which is called, "Why do you choose to live in this community ?" I found that most people who live in Valley Trail put "quiet" and "peaceful" for their reason to live in this community. So the reason we're here today is that we don't want to lose the reason why we live in Valley Trail and we want our kid to grow in a healthy and quiet environment. PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, June 22, 2016 Page 19 of 56