By: Andrea Williams
Noise Ordinance Amendment
People will now have to pay more for noise violations in Meridian. Members of the Meridian City Council unanimously approved a measure that increases fines for this type violation at their meeting Tuesday morning.
"We've got a lot of noise from a lot of different things like: motorcycles, boom boxes and animals that have really caused people not to have any peace," says Ward 5 Councilman Randy Hammon.
In hopes of addressing the problem, the council voted to significantly increase all fines for noise violations.
"The fine isn't $25 anymore, it's $75 for the first offense, and instead of the second offense being $50 it's $200, and it's $500 for the third offense" says Hammon. He says the new fine scale is in line with other cities that have a noise ordinance.
"We've been to cities like McComb and Tupelo that have these types of ordinances that also have signs in them. We drove around McComb and hardly heard any noise," says Hammon. "They were doing something about it, and that's what we want to do is to do something about it! We've asked our public works department to put up signs that say, 'Noise ordinance strictly enforced.'
As for those signs, the public works director says once he gets requests from council members to have those signs put up in certain areas, he will do that. However, as of Tuesday morning, he did not have any requests.
