Smoking ban fine, but county isn't enforcing noise ordinance

Editor:

I have read with great interest the desire of some public officials to ban certain undesirable health menaces to the general public. I have no problem with that. However, the county has failed to enforce other public health menaces already on the books, such as noise.

I live on North Belair Road and have complained about the levels of noise for years to no avail. Right now, the burglar alarm is going off at the Southern Chrome motorcycle shop -- the old Ace Hardware store -- on North Belair Road. This alarm has been sounding off at 129 decibels or higher for more than 2 1/2 hours now (Sunday morning, Aug. 8); apparently it cannot be stopped by the Columbia County Sheriff's Office. It seems to go off virtually every Sunday morning as the Saturday crew does not know how to properly set the alarm when they close up Saturday night. This has been going on for ages! Of course, the owner is unavailable on weekends.

The alarm did not go off this past weekend (Aug. 15) and for that we are grateful. Responding to false burglar alarms is a tremendous waste of the Sheriff's resources. I think the owners and/or the alarm system operators should bear the cost of having to respond to these repeated false alarms, week after week. Maybe then the problems could be fixed.

I'd like to see Commissioner Tom Mercer sink his teeth into my noise problem with half the gusto he's taking on the smoking problem! I bet the customers eating breakfast at the Sonic drive-in next door to Chrome Wheels are really enjoying themselves! And how about the poor waitresses having to listen to that noise! It's deafening. Can you hear me now?

Floyd Brown

Evans