How loud is too loud?

Tripling fines for noise complaints has Village
bar owners hoping for some restraint

QUIET DOWN OR COUGH UP: Ste-Catherine E.

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

There’s something a little incongruous about boosting fines for noise complaints in the middle of festival season, especially when the people doing the fining are the ones doing their best to attract crowds to the festivals. But that happened two weeks ago, when the downtown Ville-Marie borough almost tripled the amount rowdy boozers and bars and clubs serving them would have to pay if they are deemed too obnoxiously noisy. Fines for individuals range from $1,000 for a first offence to $10,000 for a third; fines for commercial establishments range from $3,000 for a first to $12,000 for a third.

Jacques-Alain Lavallée, a borough spokesman, told the Mirror shortly after the fines were increased that, while the same bylaw applies to all boroughs in the city, the Ville-Marie council agreed the amounts were too low to be effective. And, with 54 new terrasses now open along Ste-Catherine E. in the Village for the summer, there’s a chance that complaints from nearby residents will rise.

But owners, at least, seem puzzled. Bernard Plante, the director of the Société de développement commercial du Village, says bar owners “are not happy…. They feel [the problem] is very much exaggerated.”

What worries Plante and others is any possible ambiguity in enforcing the bylaw (while it isn’t a new bylaw, the bigger fines and the borough’s apparent determination to enforce it make the stakes that much higher). “The gay community has a reputation as one that likes to party,” he says. And while he says no one is against the principle of fining overly noisome bars or people, “if it’s addressed against all of them [it’s problematic]. There is a question of being discerning.”

Both Plante and Carlos A. Godoy, the vice-president of public affairs for the Quebec Gay Chamber of Commerce, say no one was consulted about increasing the fines—the borough had no legal obligation to do so, and so they found out largely through the media. While Godoy is sympathetic to residents—“We fundamentally believe that tax-payers and residents are entitled to have a peaceful enjoyment of the borough,” he says—there needs to be a happy compromise. “Our member companies have commercial operations that have noise as a byproduct—so citizens need to be understanding, as do the merchants.”

But neither have any idea how the bylaw will be enforced. The borough’s Lavallée says the responsibility will lie, for now, with the police, with an eye towards eventually hiring some full-time inspectors. By presstime, a Montreal police representative hadn’t returned the Mirror’s query as to how, exactly, a bar or an individual will be found to be in breach of the noise limit. They have no decibel-detectors similar to radar guns to measure noise, and police are unlikely to record well-oiled, ear-splitting merry-making after the complaint has been lodged.

Meanwhile, another bar-heavy borough, the Plateau, has no immediate plans to follow Ville-Marie’s lead in increasing fines. Borough spokesman Marc Snyder says they may look into the issue in the fall or winter. The Plateau recently allowed sidewalk terrasses in front of bars for the first time, but, says Snyder, hasn’t received any noise complaints. The sidewalk terrasses close at 10 p.m. Sunday to Thursday and at 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, before serious boozing usually gets underway.