East Hampton Village is on the right track to target noise from landscaping equipment, but it is wrong in its way of going about it. At a recent village board meeting, advocates for members of the Latino community criticized the implementation of a new village ordinance requiring licenses for yard and construction workers and further limiting work hours.
The problem is generally agreed upon: Excessive noise during evening and weekend hours is irritating and diminishes the enjoyment of properties by owners or tenants. Obviously, the solution must be regulatory, but how and on whom the regulations fall should be revisited.
At present, the advocates told the village board, laborers who are unaware of the law for whatever reason are being hauled into court and can face fines in the hundreds of dollars. In self-defense, village officials responded that warnings were given as the law was rolled out. We would ask: What evidence does the village have that the warnings were given to the same people in, say, May as were ticketed in June? Verging on the absurd, an idea given at the recent village board meeting that a largely Spanish-speaking work force follows the village’s English-language Instagram account, where news of the new rules was posted, would be offensive if it were not so laughable. If bluster is not quite an admission of guilt, it is, at a minimum, evidence that the village is not acting with compassion.
We would like to remind village officials that insensitive enforcement is a form of racial division, whether they intend it that way or not. When a broad section of the regional population believes that it is being disproportionately affected by an action, it is the moral responsibility of elected officials to pay attention. In the absence of that, one might come to believe that village officials see workers as interchangeable and therefore not deserving of basic respect.
With a largely fluid work force coming to the village from all over Long Island, many of them cannot reasonably be expected to know the nuances of village noise law. Much as we all might detest excessive signage, temporary bilingual notices on Montauk Highway might be tried.
The population that is more readily accessible to village officials is homeowners; they should at least be subject to equivalent fines and compelled to appear in court alongside their landscapers. Why is it that the laborers are the ones being affected and not the property owners for whom they are working? This is unfair. We all must remember that the problem is noise, not the human beings who are unwittingly making it. Achieving compliance with noise laws should be the primary goal.