By Delayna Earley
The Island News
Before deciding how lively downtown Beaufort can be, the city’s leaders have spent months deciding how loud it can be.
That question moved a step closer to an answer at the March 10 City Council regular meeting, but not without some real-time wordsmithing, and not before one councilman took his own decibel meter downtown for homework.
The revised “loud and unseemly noise” ordinance, which had its first crack at a first reading on Feb. 10, returned to Council carrying the same unresolved tensions it left with: where to set the decibel cap, when quiet hours should begin, and whether some of the draft’s new language went further than anyone intended.
Council answered all three with amendments and passed the ordinance on first reading.
A final reading is still required before it becomes law.
Where it started: the February debate
When Police Chief Stephenie Price brought the revised ordinance to Council at the Feb. 10 meeting, she framed it as an effort to “improve clarity and consistency and alignment with current community expectations” and to “balance our neighborhood impacts with business and event activity.”
What followed was a detailed debate over science, practicality and institutional memory.
The sharpest early disagreement was over the proposed 85-decibel cap.
“I think the decibel levels are too high,” Mayor Pro Tem Mike McFee said that night. “I think that the highest decibel that we should be looking at is 70. Eighty-five … is onerous or excessive.” McFee pointed to widely recognized public health standards identifying prolonged exposure to higher decibel levels as potentially harmful.
Councilman Josh Scallate questioned the logic of the draft’s 60-to-85-decibel range in the nighttime music district.
“If the cap’s 85 … why would you have a range there?” he said.
Others floated a “plainly audible” standard – whether sound can be clearly heard from a certain distance – as an alternative to strict decibel measurements.
Councilman Mitch Mitchell, ever mindful of the downtown music district’s complicated past, cautioned against moving too fast.
“There is much history between the nighttime music district downtown. Much history,” he said.
He later suggested the simplest path might be consistency, making the new draft match the old ordinance, and revisiting it later.
McFee noted that past legal challenges had shaped the existing structure, and that institutional memory matters.
Quiet hours drew public scrutiny too.
Graham Trask, a Bay Street resident, urged Council to reject the proposed 7 a.m. start time for louder commercial activity.
“I believe that 7 a.m. start time for loud hours is really early,” he said. “St. Helena’s bells don’t go off until 8. I think 8 is appropriate, not 7.” He also weighed in on the decibel debate: “I did measure 85 decibels … and 85 decibels … that’s loud.”
Council approved the ordinance on first reading that night, with a commitment to take it up again the following month — amended.
Scallate does his homework
By the time the most recent version arrived on the dais, staff had incorporated the lower decibel threshold McFee had championed, dropping the cap to 70.
But Scallate, who had suggested in February that Council should go downtown and actually listen before deciding, had done exactly that.
He told Council he’d downloaded a decibel meter app and spent time outside Hemingway’s on a Saturday afternoon while live music was playing.
Right up against the band, his phone read 85 decibels.
When he stepped back to the pavilion, it had dropped to 70.
Walking toward the marina parking lot, he said, he couldn’t hear the music at all.
“To justify dropping the threshold down to 70 from 85 when we really don’t have any complaints to support that, I’m not sure is necessary outside of maybe it feels good to do it tonight,” Scallate said.
McFee stood by the science.
He explained that his reference to 70 decibels came from the National Institute on Hearing Loss and federal hearing health data, which indicate that sustained exposure above 70 decibels can begin causing damage over time. OSHA, he noted, uses similar thresholds.
His point was never that 85 decibels at a distance is dangerous, it was that the city should not be in the business of certifying a threshold that health agencies flag as risky, particularly for those who live and work near the music district.
The two found a middle ground.
Scallate proposed setting the cap at 75 decibels, measured from the property line.
The change would apply to general noise prohibitions citywide and to amplified music in the nighttime music district.
McFee seconded it.
Council agreed.
7 a.m. vs. 8 a.m.: a question of whose alarm clock
The quiet-hours start time – one of the issues Trask and others had flagged in February – came up again at Tuesday’s meeting. Mayor Phil Cromer said he was surprised to see the 7 a.m. start time still in the draft, given that Council had signaled it should stay at 8 a.m., consistent with the original ordinance.
A staff member noted the change back to 8 a.m. was a straightforward fix.
While they were at it, Councilman Neil Lipsitz raised a practical concern: the city’s contracted garbage trucks operate before 8 a.m. at many addresses, and it wasn’t clear the ordinance’s equipment exemption, which covers machinery operated by federal, state, and local governments, extended to contracted services.
The city attorney clarified that city-owned equipment was already exempt. But trash hauling is contracted out, not city operated. Mitchell agreed the language needed to cover that gap.
The ordinance was amended to explicitly include city-contracted service vehicles alongside city-owned equipment, with the allowed hours set at 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. – the same window as the original ordinance.
The 50-foot problem: making the whole city a library
The amendment that drew the most pointed discussion had nothing to do with music. The draft ordinance included a “plainly audible” provision stating that any sound audible from 50 feet away was prohibited — at any time of day, anywhere in the city.
Scallate caught it and wasn’t having it. “I’ve got birds that chirp in my backyard that can be heard at 50 feet away,” he said. “I think that’s way too harsh… you’re preventing people from playing music in their backyard while they’re doing whatever. To me, that’s overregulation.”
He said the language could realistically prohibit people from enjoying their own yards with guests at any hour, and that he couldn’t understand why it had ended up in the draft.
McFee agreed it went further than Council had intended.
Mitchell noted that tying the standard to quiet hours, where it would make more sense to prohibit clearly audible noise from a neighbor’s property late at night, would be a more defensible approach.
Council struck the blanket “any sound” language and replaced it with the 75-decibel property-line standard, giving enforcement a clear, measurable benchmark.
Enforceability: the question that lingers
Lipsitz raised a concern that has shadowed the ordinance through multiple drafts: how do you actually prove a noise violation in court? If a resident calls to complain and an officer arrives to find the music already stopped, or if the violation is disputed, what evidence exists?
A staff member noted that the original ordinance contained language about willfully disturbing the peace, which required the prosecution to establish intent to disturb rather than mere disturbance.
That standard, they said, may be more defensible in court and could be worth restoring.
Council took note of the issue.
That conversation is expected to continue at second reading.
What was passed
As amended and approved on first reading, the revised noise ordinance would set a 75-decibel cap measured from the property line for prohibited noise citywide; allow amplified music in the downtown nighttime music district up to 75 decibels between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays – consistent with the existing framework; restore the quiet-hours start time to 8 a.m., with louder commercial activity permitted between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m.; and exempt city-contracted service vehicles from the noise restrictions, in addition to city-owned equipment already covered.
Council passed the amendments unanimously and then approved the ordinance as amended on first reading. One more reading is required.
The noise ordinance continues to move alongside Council’s consideration of a proposed downtown social district under a 2023 state law allowing municipalities to designate open-container zones.
The two issues are separate, but both turn on the same underlying question: what kind of place does Beaufort want its downtown to be, and who gets to decide when it crosses the line.
After months of debate, Council is getting closer to an answer. Whether 75 decibels is the right one remains, at least for now, an open question.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.