Soon after the snare drums snapped outside Liberty High School, a sheriff?s deputy showed up with a decibel meter.
The school?s marching band, the deputy declared last summer, had violated a 65-decibel noise limit enacted to silence annoying off-road vehicles such as ATVs.
A county report suggested planting trees to deflect the music or moving the band practices away from nearby homes, but Superintendent Chuck Ecker said neither was practical, and the school system filed an application with the county to exempt Liberty from the ordinance.
“Some of it involved planting trees that would take forever to grow, and another was to move them, but then you need new lighting,” Ecker said.
Because it was the first request for exemption from the noise ordinance, county commissioners decided Tuesday to handle the public hearing themselves. A date has not been scheduled.
The sheriff?s office never ticketed the school when it exceeded the limit by five decibels.
“Citing school bands was not the spirit of the law,” said Lt. Phil Kasten, spokesman for the sheriff?s office.
And only one resident complained to the sheriff?s office about the noise.
“When the high school band practices, we must close all windows and doors in the back of the house to minimize disruptions to our family,” homeowner Scott Friedly wrote to the school board in August.
“Last season our 2-year-old daughter at the time would not go to sleep until the band finished after 9 p.m., and we are experiencing [it] again this year.”
The school system hired an engineer to see how much it would cost to create a buffer of trees between the band?s practice field and the homes or to set up new lights for the band to practice on a field farther away.
The price came to $130,000.
Because the band often complied with the ordinance and the music played is not “unreasonably objectionable to the average person,” the variance should be granted, the application reads.
