Silence gets no hearing

The News Virginian
Published: November 20, 2008

In the howling din of government bureaucracy churning at full hum, noise ordinances tend to resound as sensibility shrinks quietly into City Hall’s dusky corners. So steps forward the Waynesboro City Council to provide bite for “toothless” noise laws, evidently in the name of muffling barking dogs, while downtown’s silence deafens.

Small towns diverge in character at many points, but rarely if at all on the subject of complaints regarding canine comportment. Invariably, dogs yap mercilessly, wander the streets in search of garbage pails to overturn or with owners clutching leashes and looking casually on, the mongrel wretches mark territory on lush lawns with smelly stuff left to foul the air and stain the soles.

The ears of Mayor Tim Williams and councilwomen Nancy Dowdy and Lorie Smith ring with the sound of noise complaints from constituents. Smith, in fact, has gone to the bother of keeping a list. She can little help but notice the prevalence of pooches and their dogged persistence in ignoring business hours, after which the animal control officer turns to ordinary citizen. “Dogs,” Smith observed, “don’t stop barking after 5 p.m.”

What to do? Sharpen teeth, of course. The council is considering a sliding scale to punish repeat offenders – not the dogs, but the owners who idle as Rover roars. The high end of the scale would equate to a rolled-up newspaper with a brick tucked inside: a $250 fine and a Class IV misdemeanor.

For a slice of perspective, consider that drinking alcohol while driving is a Class IV misdemeanor in Virginia. So, too, is shooting pigeons. And urinating in public. And until the Supreme Court intervened in 2005, premarital sex. In a solitary sweep of legislative pen, masters who fail to halt the flapping of Fido’s jaws could sink straight into that sticky muck of immorality where boozers, bird killers, bladder releasers and bawdy beaus wallow.

How to describe such treatment? In a word: Ruff.

This also applies to the task of scheduling for police upon whom would fall enforcement’s burden. City Attorney Todd Patrick estimates that “90 percent” of noise complaints are resolved when a man or woman in blue knocks on the door of the offender, or the offender’s owner. This hints at a vanishing commodity, that of common sense.

We are sympathetic to the irritation a barking dog can inflict. Other woofers also vex. These pierce the air with sonic booms from car stereos. These cars frequently are driven by the same young people who turn home stereos to full throb at hours when working people are obliged to sleep in accordance with productive membership in society. Count us among those who would like to feed such people the dose of manners for which they are starved.

But we are disturbed by the increasing American habit to seek the remedy of Draco for all that galls. The result of this is a flowering of laws that have consumed fields of reason. Relying on regulations rather than conversation to resolve trivial conflicts narrows the vision, producing the kind of myopia that blocks views of forests with trees.

What this means in Waynesboro is that while larger concerns – starting with a desolate downtown – scream for a hearing, city officials hearken to the yelps of dogs and people who bark about them. The City Council continues to turn a deaf ear to that which matters while squinting in darkness for a purpose they refuse to see.