In 2023, newly elected Providence Mayor Brett Smiley proposed addressing excessive noise by purchasing hand-held noise meters for Providence Police, which sounded oddly familiar to Noise Project volunteers. The text below is from Providence City Council member Jo-Ann Ryan’s Oct. 2017 News & Notes blog:
We asked Mayor Smiley’s office what happened to the noise meters that Ryan references in the highlighted section above, and they told us they could find no record that they were ever purchased under previous Mayor Jorge Elorza.
Similarly, Councilmember Ryan told the Noise Project that she herself has no knowledge as to whether the money that the City Council authorized for noise meters at her behest was ever spent to actually purchase them. Ryan seemed unconcerned by this, and offered the Providence Shrug™.
And more than 20 years earlier, in June 1994, then-Mayor Buddy Cianci supplied Providence Police with four noise meters, with eight more to follow. A year later, reports about excessive noise outnumbered all other complaints in the city.
So perhaps a healthy dose of cynicism in regard to hand-held noise meters — to say nothing of Providence’s low-impact noise-enforcement efforts — is warranted. Remember: Like the legal defense for libel or slander, it’s not cynicism if it’s actually true.