SUPPPORTS ITEM NO. 1 SPECIAL COUNCIL MEETING MAY 13, 1997 POLICY REPORT ENVIRONMENT Date: April 21, 1997 C.C. File No. 3142 TO: Vancouver City Council FROM: Director of Environmental Health SUBJECT: Urban Noise Task Force RECOMMENDATION A. THAT Council receive the Urban Noise Task Force report City Noise and thank the Task Force members for their work in producing the report; B. THAT Council adopt those recommendations designated by staff as being readily implementable and supportable; require reports back from staff on those with resource implications, or which require amendments, legal input or further consultation with impacted segments; advocate for action by other levels of government or external agencies where the recommended action is outside of the City s mandate; and refrain from endorsing those recommendations which staff have indicated are unsupportable; C. THAT Council endorse the approach proposed in this report to establish sector-specific work teams, consisting of appropriate City and Vancouver Health Board staff and at least one member of the Task Force, to refine and prioritize those recommendations approved by Council with detailed reports back on implementation by October 31, 1997. CITY MANAGER'S COMMENTS The City Manager notes that the City Noise report is very ambitious, both in its scope and scale and in its urgency. Time lines provided in the Implementation section ambitious, especially given the other competing activities drawing on City staff time. More significantly, in this period of unprecedented fiscal restraint, the opportunity does not exist to supplement City resources so as to accelerate what will otherwise be very slow progress on the report s recommendations. The report will generate very high expectations which we will be unable to meet. Some sense of priority, both within the scope of the report and against other City objectives needs to be realized. We need to those noise impacts which are clear and pressing health concerns. We need to distinguish the pathological from the aesthetic, the persistent and unacceptable from those noise issues which might be more occasional and tolerable. Without some sense of priority in context with other issues (health and non-health) the City is facing, the proposals contained in the report may take on a priority beyond their relative importance. To some, noise may be viewed as an inescapable consequence of civilization and urbanization, requiring some control but also some considerable acceptance. It is because of this reality that dealing with noise in Vancouver will be a balancing act. Livable neighbourhoods clearly require some quiet (and even that will be difficult to achieve in areas of mixed use and heavy traffic) but the moderation of noise will also need to be harmonized with other livability objectives such as: - creating a safe, attractive and, where appropriate, lively public realm; - encouraging affordable housing and historic character; and - ensuring efficient access to the city for commerce and recreation. Finally, the level and cost of additional regulations is an obvious concern and was cautioned against in the Council report that created the Task Force. All additional regulations must be justified by benefits which unambiguously exceed the costs - the challenge will be in measuring these costs and benefits. The City Manager submits Recommendation A for approval and Recommendation B and C for consideration. COUNCIL POLICY City Council established the Urban Noise Task Force in March of 1996 to establish a strategic response to urban noise issues. The City, through the Noise By-law and Motor Vehicle Noise Abatement By-law, establishes standards and limits for noise emissions to protect its citizens from adverse noise impacts. SUMMARY The Urban Noise Task Force has, in City Noise , provided Council and the City with a challenging and ambitious set of recommendations to address Urban Noise into the next millennium. Staff have endeavoured to place these 165 recommendations in the context of health impacts, competing priorities, resource constraints and jurisdictional restrictions and, by so doing, ensure that the work of the Task Force will come to fruition. Staff have categorized the Task Force recommendations as either Supportable Outright, Report Back Required, Advocate Externally or Unsupportable and have recommended an implementation team process. PURPOSE This report presents Council with the Final Report of the Urban Noise Task Force together with an initial response from City staff on the 165 recommendations contained with the City Noise report. BACKGROUND In March of 1996 Council established the Urban Noise Task Force, appointing ten citizen representatives and two Council liaisons. Over the past year the Task Force has completed the task set out in the initial terms of reference, produced a draft report in the summer of 1996, commissioned a public opinion poll on noise issues, solicited public input through the media and at two October public workshops and refined the report into the final version dated April, 1997. DISCUSSION The scope and magnitude of the recommendations presented in City Noise have the potential of dissuading the City from seriously addressing any but the most obviously supportable recommendations. Staff suggest that what is needed is a structured prioritization of work around those recommendations which address tangible health and livability impacts from urban noise. To this end staff have provided, in Appendix A, some suggestions (in Staff Recommendations column) as to actions Council might take in addressing each of the 165 recommendations. These recommendations fall into four basic categories. Support: Staff have evaluated these recommendations and feel that they can be supported outright since they either reflect current City policy or they are motherhood in nature and do not require any additional resources. In some instances they may require some re-prioritization of existing work or later implementation dates to allow them to be fit into work programs. Report Back: These recommendations, although generally supportable will require reports back to Council on legality, feasibility, costs and resource implications as well as predicted impacts on certain stakeholder groups. Staff have attempted to minimize the number of items requiring reports back to Council. Advocate: In those instances where the mandate for action lies with another level of government, government agency or external body, staff have recommended that Council communicate with the appropriate organizations as advocates for the recommended action. Non-support: In a minority of cases, staff have recommended non-support for the recommended action. Rather than generalize about the rationale for non-support, staff have summarized below the reasons for not supporting 23 of the Task Force recommendations. DEPARTMENTAL COMMENTS Departmental comments were provided by Engineering, Community Services, Police, Environmental Health and Park Board based on the January, 1997 draft report. In general they reflected some common themes: - Given constrained or shrinking budgets, only the most urgent of these items will be addressed. - The ambitious timelines set out in the Implementation section will be hard to achieve given the competing initiatives already tugging on staff resources. - Many of the recommended actions proposed by the Task Force are already in place, although perhaps not at the level or priority placed on them by the Task Force. - A number of the recommendations are outside of the official mandate of the City and, if necessary, are best done by others. - Council adoption of some of the recommendations, especially those where the City either does not have the power or the resources to implement them, will unnecessarily raise public expectations. Engineering: Many of the traffic-related and operational recommendations impact most directly on the resources of the Engineering Department. The following summarizes the General Manager of Engineering Services comments: - Use of mediation should be limited to neighbour-to-neighbour problems. - Restrict traffic noise standards to new construction. Consideration should be given to acoustical design on arterial streets. - Noted that the Neighbourhood Transportation Branch was established to deal with traffic calming issues in neighbourhoods. - The question was raised as to who pays and who benefits when traffic noise mitigation is proposed or installed. - With respect to ensuring that roads are smooth for noise reduction reasons, the current preventive maintenance programs of cracksealing and road patching would have to be abandoned in favour of more expensive alternatives such as full width overlays, at significant extra costs. Given decreasing budgets the priorities have been "safe and serviceable rather than quiet". - Engineering Services has an ongoing program of trial implementation of new road surface materials, including a stretch of rubberized asphalt which has been shown to be quieter than traditional surfaces. The trend, however, is to more durable mixes which are coarser, generating slightly more tire noise. - Concerns expressed about the reliance and proliferation of signage and questions the merit of signs advising about engine brake use and designated truck routes. Educational approaches through industry groups are preferred. - Concerns expressed about the proposed revisions to downtown garbage pickup area and its impact on the ability of city crews to empty bins and clean lanes. - Engineering is already implementing quieter technology for garbage bins. (This should be promoted to the private sector) - The notion of single garbage contractors servicing specific areas of the downtown has been raised previously for other reasons and vehemently opposed by the private contractors. - Engineering has experimented with alternate warning methods to replace audible back-up beepers and found problems with reliability and safety concerns. - Significant concerns were expressed about the impact on City services from the proposed restrictions on Gardening equipment use and Construction activity. (NOTE: The existing by-law sets different limitations for work on the street, whether it is work done by the City or by utility companies. This was done in recognition of the public benefit of this work, the need to get in and out of the street quickly and the short-term nature of the work on the street.) - Concerns were expressed about the availability of "silenced" or sound-treated equipment for city use and the added costs. Community Services: The General Manager of Community Services provided concerns related mostly to land use and development-related issues: - With respect to the City giving consideration to acoustic aspects in land use development, staff pointed out that in some zones this is already in place but that this is not consistent throughout the city. Nor is there consistent follow-up or enforcement of acoustical design requirements and the City lacks in-house expertise on acoustical measures. An option might be to require developers to provide certification that acoustical requirements have been fully implemented. - Support for mediation in principle, provided it is limited in scope and costs are minimized. - Support voluntary designation of Soundmarks and Acoustic Sanctuaries provided the already full Heritage work program is not impacted. - Support enhancing public access to noise information and the encouragement of voluntary compliance through common sense and respect (actually talking to one s neighbour before phoning City Hall). - Support the tightening of noise standards for entertainment facilities consistent with the Downtown Liquor Licensing Policy review. - Concerns expressed about the added work of developing and implementing traffic noise impact assessment procedures. - Concerns expressed about the proliferation of berms/sound fences and the creation of walled communities , which might also impact on safety initiatives such as the CPTED. - Concerns expressed about busker limitations and the creation of "busker police" (Note: Police are already spending time responding to complaints about overly loud street musicians) - Lawnmower/leafblower restrictions are likely unworkable unless City establishes a lawnmower police . Promotion of common sense and common courtesy can be much more effective and less costly than difficult to enforce regulations. Police: The comments from the Police department basically indicated that many of the initiatives (13.16, 13.19, 13.20, 13.22, 13.23, 14.3, 14.6, 22.1, 27.1, 36.2, 36.3) are ongoing enforcement issues and are dealt with normally on a complaint basis as priorities permit. The recommendations directed to the Police Department are basically enforcement issues. Many symptoms of urban noise enforced by police are more effectively dealt with at other levels. For example, noisy exhaust systems are better dealt with through metered testing at stations rather than on street enforcement. The police support the initiative of the Task Force and the intent of the report towards improving city noise levels. The amount of time that the police can allocate towards any one recommendation is restricted by workload and a prioritization of police resources. The specific comments included: - In section 14 of the report there is an indication that Police have noise meters. For clarification, the Police do not have noise meters for traffic noise enforcement. - The Police would welcome the sharing of data on problem noise properties with other City Departments - With respect to house alarms, the City has a Charter amendment request before the province on this issue. It would be useful to monitor what Richmond is doing in this regard. Park Board: The General Manager of Parks & Recreation notes that the report has covered an extensive area of influences on the amount of noise present in the City and made many practical recommendations for positive improvements to the problem. Where there are recommendations to change or restrict present activities, there should be an identified budget to ensure the transition. Specific comments included: - The designation of acoustic sanctuaries should only be done if it s consistent with the building use. - The intent to designate all parks as quiet would preclude many activities currently utilizing these parks and is not supported. Any increase in the number of these designated parks would require the approval of the Park Board after a community involvement process. - The potential conflict between noise barriers and the principles of CPTED (open and visible park space) was identified. - The issue of licensing/approving buskers on Park Board property should be left with the Park Board. - The use of private radios in Park Board facilities has seldom been a problem and a prohibition is not warranted. - Meeting the intent of restricted times for lawn maintenance activities at Golf Courses will be very difficult. Existing exemptions should be continued. - Chain saws are used by the Park Board on a regular basis, not just in emergencies. Proposed restrictions would be unworkable and the need for special permits would add to the administrative burden. Vancouver Health Board: The Noise Control Officer has expressed concerns over the inherent conflict that accompanies mixed use development, especially in the downtown core. The expectations of new residents to these areas need to be somehow tempered to recognize the fact that they are not living in a purely residential community and may need to accept a somewhat compromised level of noise. The City continues to approve new residential uses in close proximity to noisy commercial uses such as night clubs and entertainment areas. Initiatives such as live/work and work/live also have the potential of generating significantly higher levels of noise complaints. The Environmental Health Division supports exploring the use of mediation as a means of reducing the demand for regulation and legal action. The experiences of Edmonton and Portland s Neighbourhood Mediation Centre should be investigated and the mediation option pursued as an option rather than an adjunct to regulation. Many of the recommendations proposed by the Task Force will entail major revisions to the Noise By-law. When these amendments are reported to Council, the Division will take the opportunity to bring forward additional suggested or necessary changes not already covered by the Task Force. The Division supports the notion of progressive enforcement and the increased use of tickets to deal with noise offences. The Division is also prepared to ensure that evening quick response coverage is available for noise complaints of an emergency nature. IMPLEMENTATION AND COMMUNICATION Implementation of the recommendations accepted by Council will be a challenge given the number and complexity of initiatives. Therefore, it is recommended that the adopted recommendations be packaged into sector-specific groups, consistent with the major chapter groupings of the report, for implementation purposes. For those actions requiring further work and a report back to Council, it is recommended that implementation teams be formed around the major topic areas and that these teams consist of the appropriate City and VHB staff and at least one member of the Task Force. These teams would be responsible for refining the specific proposals, gathering the necessary information on costs and resource implications and preparing a report back to Council, through the City/VHB staff person, by October 31, 1997. At this point it is suggested that there be no more than four implementation teams focusing on Traffic/Transportation/Signals; Home/Recreational/Maintenance; Industrial/Construction noise and Education. The Director of Environmental Health should be responsible for overall coordination of implementation plans. FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS Staff have evaluated the recommendations of the Task Force against the reality of no additional resources. Adoption of items that have inferred cost or staffing implications will necessitate the identification of external or new sources of funding to support them. SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS Noise is recognized by the City and the City Noise report as a stressor and a public health issue. Reduction in overall noise and individual noise events has been shown to have a beneficial effect on the health of individuals and the well-being of society. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPLICATIONS If, as the City Noise report states, noise is the silent environmental issue of the 1990s, then the proposed activities set out in the report should contribute to the amelioration of the sound environment and the reduction of the negative impacts of urban noise on the natural environment. CONCLUSION The Urban Noise Task Force has provided Council with a comprehensive wish list or blueprint of initiatives that could be taken to improve and protect Vancouver s soundscape and the aural and psychological health of our residents. A well-thought out implementation program is needed to ensure that the majority of these initiatives come to fruition. * * * * *