Unexpected 90-day notice strains neighbor’s relationships
Elizabeth Taggart
Much to my chagrin, my roommate and I recently received a 90-day noise complaint. While I’m not totally against the Tempe ordinance, I do think it should only be used as a last resort by people that are fed up with constantly having to deal with loud neighbors.
However, there were fewer than 10 people at my house and we mostly stayed inside. There may have been a few noisy instances when people went outside to have a smoke, but it wasn’t like there was a constant high level of noise. There wasn’t even a radio playing outside.
While it was 12:30 a.m., it was also a Friday night and the bar down the street wasn’t even closed yet. It’s not like we were breaking any laws, everyone at my house was well over the age of 21.
The ordinance states it is to control gatherings “when such continued activity is determined to be a threat to the peace, health, safety or general welfare of the public.”
It was passed because there were too many neighborhoods by ASU where college students were constantly throwing parties and having people back over after the police broke them up.
I am not one of these people.
We rarely have parties at my house, and they are always very low-key affairs. We usually inform the neighbors ahead of time what we are planning and tell them that if it gets too loud to come over and let us know.
I realize there was no forewarning this time but would it have been so hard to come and knock on my door and ask us to keep it down? I’ve lived in the same house for almost two years, why no warning before going right to the police?
And if they had been bothered in the past, why not let us know the next day? Had I known I was bothering my neighbors, I certainly would have done my best to not let it happen again.
How am I to know what bothers them without them telling me? I’m now at risk of being fined between $250 and $1,000.
Whatever happened to being neighborly?
I think calling the police before giving us a warning was a far greater social sin than having 10 people over on a Friday night.
