The head of Ottawa’s largest music festivals is refusing to pay a noise bylaw fine and says he’ll go to court if he has to.
Ottawa Folk Festival Director, Mark Monahan, says he ultimately doesn’t want to have to go down the road of a legal fight with the city when it comes to noise regulations, “we’re involved in some high profile events in the city and all events should be made aware of the ground rules and they should be applied evenly to everyone.”
Monahan is referring to a $305 fine given to the festival after some residents in a Glebe neighbourhood complained the music was too loud on the festival’s opening night September 10, 2014, "I think we're going to question the validity of that ticket, find out what it was for, it wasn't a decibel level violation and make this part of the argument and the debate of what needs to be done going forward."
Residents again complained of the sound coming from Hog’s Back Park on the festival’s final night Sunday September 14, 2014. After an investigation Sunday night, Ottawa bylaw officers told the festival they didn’t have sufficient cause to hand-out a fine.
Monahan says the city must loosen regulations for special events, “it’s not fair to give noise exemptions on an adhoc basis, different exemptions to different organizations”. He wants to sit down with city officials, community members and event organizers to lay all the issues out on the table, “regulations that we’re dealing with were written 20 or 30 years ago. I think the city has changed a lot over the years and we need to really update our approach to sound levels in the city, events and get on the same page”.
“It’s easy enough for me to say as an event organizer ‘come on get a life, what’s your problem’ but in fairness I’m a resident too,” he told CTV, “that’s what bringing people together will achieve, just laying it all out on the table and decide what are we doing about it.”
Monahan is also the director of Ottawa Bluesfest, the largest outdoor summer music festival in the city.
