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Beaudin: Yes, I wasn't meaning to diminish the severity of those events. I was speaking more about the timeframe, the nearing 40 years. Commissioner O'Connor: I was getting more at the attitude that they didn't even comply with what the City was asking. Beaudin: Understood. I was speaking about the timeframe. Commissioner O'Connor: So I had a question a few years ago when I thought we were going to have a meeting and Adam brought up to me that the noise ordinance doesn't include human voices, and when I read the noise ordinance, it's clear to me that it says that no person "shall" and there's no comma to separate that we're talking about the same item. "No person shall or any mechanical, etc., etc." To me, I read that it includes both, and one of the issues I remember —I forget how many years back it was, not that long —we had the use come before us to put in a children's playground in the back of Raley's that was limited to only 16 children which was much further away from the property line and we were concerned about the noise that it might create for a few houses on the back side, and we denied that project because we thought those 16 voices would be disturbing to the adjoining neighbors. So I don't understand why we would today say that voices don't count. And if I could yell and scream as loud as I want and it's not a noise violation, but if Nancy records me yelling and screaming and Nancy plays my voice back on a recorder, now I've violated the noise ordinance. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Weinstein: So let's take the question about human - generated noise first and then we'll talk about the Raley's example. We've had a long- standing interpretation here at the City that the noise ordinance does not apply to human - generated noises and we acknowledge there's different ways to read the residential property provision in the noise code, but this is a consistent interpretation that we've been employing for the last couple of years and probably more than several years as well, and it's based on a couple of things. One is that it's not really practical to regulate human noise. Human noise happens all over the place in our community. There are people having parties in residential backyards, there are kids playing in backyards. So from a practicality standpoint, it's just not practical to account for human noise. And secondly, in a community like this, there's going to be people living in close proximity to others so humans are going to generate noise all over the place in our community. The third point is that human noise changes over time. When kids play there are periods when the noise is really loud. There are periods when the noise is not so loud. So that's sort of the basis for our long- standing interpretation that non - amplified human noise does not exceed the thresholds in the noise ordinance. In regard to the Raley's example, that was a really different situation. That was a rare parking area being proposed for conversion into an outdoor play area where no outdoor play area previously existed. And staff's recommendation to deny that application in that situation was primarily based on the fact that the proposal posed safety concerns. The back area in the back of the Raley's shopping center was used frequently for drop -off's and pickups and deliveries so there were big semi - trucks moving back there through PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, June 22, 2016 Page 9 of 56