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Wednesday morning, City Manager David Deitch emailed Mid Bay News to tell us the city “addressed the issues with the property owner on Wednesday morning, and the issue was resolved by Friday night.”
The drama concerning Niceville’s newest oil change place has not ended yet. A group of residents from a condo building southeast of the construction site for a new Express Oil Change asked the Niceville City Council to consider some action to reduce the noise coming from the area under construction.
Rebecca Williams, a resident of the corner unit of the waterfront property closest to the construction site, told the council that she and her husband had dealt with the noise from a diesel water pump 24 hours a day for several weeks. “We do not sleep; we do not use our balconies,” Williams said, “There is no going out and fishing in the morning. There’s no having a cup of coffee on our patios, it has been absolutely miserable.”
She told the council that many of her neighbors could not work from home anymore because of the noise.
City Manager David Deitch told Williams and the dozen or so of her neighbors who came before the council that they would work on the issue this week.
Do the residents of the condos on White Street have any recourse?
According to the Niceville City Code, it is unlawful for any person to willfully make, continue, or cause to be made or continue any loud and raucous noise, which term shall mean any sound which, because of its volume level, duration, and character, annoys, disturbs, injures, or endangers the comfort, repose, health, peace or safety of reasonable persons of ordinary sensibilities within the limits of the city.”
Included in this rule is a provision concerning construction. “The erection, including excavation, demolition, alteration or repair of any building other than between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday and 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., daylight savings time, Monday through Saturday (hereafter called “normal hours”) or in case of urgent necessity in the interest of public health and safety, and then only with a permit from the building inspector, which permit may be granted for a period not to exceed three (3) days while the emergency continues and which permit may be renewed for periods of three (3) days or less while the emergency continues.”
City Code provides for a penalty of a second-degree misdemeanor, which is punishable by either a fine of $500 or (up to) a sixty-day prison sentence.
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