Election Day: Bethlehem Candidates Missed an Opportunity to Make Some Noise on a Real Issue

— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs

Election Day is finally here, but although Bethlehem’s candidates did a lot of talking the last few months, they uttered nary a peep about an issue people care about: noise.

Yes, noise from businesses and houses, but mainly from vehicles. Loud car stereos, motorcycles with speakers, and straight-pipers, hot rodders and others who — for some reason that goes back to their childhood — want to make noise that we all have to hear.

It’s worst on the straightaways, such as Stefko Boulevard and West Broad Street, but it happens everywhere. Dining outside on Main Street can be pleasant, or it can be a cacophany, a mobile Musikfest of blasted bits of bad music.

As I told a previous mayor, “I don’t care if it’s rap, rock or Rachmaninoff, why do we all have to hear it?”

Then we have the modified exhaust systems that gratify somebody’s need for attention. Somebody roaring down Stefko can be heard blocks away. Why? They could do this in the countryside, but what’s the fun with nobody else hearing it?

Yet our candidates prefer to talk about the environment, over which they have almost zero control; housing, over which the city has little authority, and most irritatingly, about each other, as if we care to hear their personal comments.

Noise control is difficult to enforce because the offenders are moving. Cities have usually approached the issue via a decibel measure, or the “reasonable person” standard.

That is, if it bothers a reasonable person, it’s bad. My standard is, if I can hear it a block away, that’s indisputably bad. I’m not talking about a Harley cruising by, or somebody having a party now and then, but boom cars with relentless bass blasting and modified exhaust systems.

We have a great police department in Bethlehem. When I had a recurring noise issue with a neighbor about a year ago, I did contact the police after trying to talk to the neighbors (a few houses away, they were that loud).

An officer came out and not only took care of it, he gave them a lecture and there’s been a big improvement ever since. Any neighborhood is better when it’s quieter.

As some Bethlehem residents say when they think an issue is getting worse, “It’s getting to be like Allentown.”

So once our candidates have settled in from this election, I hope they will address this. It’s something they can at least discuss, rather than play pretend on other issues.

There may be an existing ordinance, or a model ordinance used in other cities. Either way, it’s time to stop the music.