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Dear Noise Project supporter,
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We want to alert you to an Ordinance Committee hearing at City Hall this Thursday, Nov. 13, at 6:00 p.m., to gather public input on a proposed student-impact fee. The fee is an effort to address anti-social behavior by a small number of off-campus students, as well as real-estate investors / developers exploiting residential neighborhoods, and colleges / universities shirking their responsibility to enforce their own student-conduct codes.
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It overlaps two related Noise Project programs: residential and commercial noise, so we’re sending this to our main e-mail list, so as not to exclude anyone who may be affected by it. Moreover, you don’t have to live near a school to be impacted by student conduct — nor should the City Council so demonstrably address student noise, while ignoring similar disruptive and illegal behavior by non-students elsewhere in the city.
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The proposed ordinance would require colleges and universities in Providence to report the number and residential locations of their students living off-campus, and require the dwelling owners to pay a $300-per-student “impact” fee to at least partially offset the costs associated with disruptive behavior in residential neighborhoods, and the related city services such as the police and fire departments, parking control, garbage, etc.
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Given Providence’s long history and culture of lax enforcement — and PNP’s general opposition to incremental efforts to address well-documented, long-term noise issues — we’re not idealizing how effective the ordinance will be. However, we support it as a means of identifying and aggregating the parties responsible for enabling noise and other disruptive behavior in the areas around post-secondary educational institutions: students, commercial property owners, colleges, and the city government itself.
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We urge the City Council to amend the proposed ordinance to require the schools in question — Brown University, Johnson and Wales, Providence College, Rhode Island College, and the Rhode Island School of Design — to also report anonymized data on the relevant disciplinary records of off-campus students (e.g., noise, littering, vandalism, etc), and to include specific enforcement provisions and penalties for the owners of long-identified repeat-offender nuisance properties (i.e., “party houses”).
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If you can attend the hearing and testify in person, please do so. If you can’t attend but would like to submit testimony on student and / or residential noise, the deadline is Wednesday, Nov. 12 at 3:00 p.m. Send your comments on the proposed ordinance, student conduct, commercial exploitation of residential neighborhoods, college and university malefaction, and / or lax city enforcement of noise and other regulations to cityclerk@providenceri.gov, and put “student-impact fee” in the subject line.
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If you’d like to help the Noise Project address either residential or commercial noise, please fill out our volunteer intake form. If you’d like to help curtail other noise sources or contribute in other ways, please contact us and put your interest in the subject line.
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Thank you for supporting a quieter, healthier, and more sustainable Providence
for all of its residents and visitors!
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“Noise is the New Smoking”
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