Jamestown City Council members are considering a change to the city’s noise ordinance focused on loud noises from vehicles.

Simply stated, if police ticket a vehicle or a driver three times, city police will have the ability to have the vehicle towed and impounded at full cost to the vehicle’s owner. Noise complaints, particularly from vehicles, have been a pretty constant complaint to the council over the past several years. That’s especially true during the summer months. The city isn’t trying to hide its intent, saying in the staff memo included in the council’s agenda for Monday’s meeting that, “This ordinance change would provide immediate relief to the ears of residents.”

There were 884 noise complaints in 2024, according to the Jamestown Police Department’s annual report released earlier this year. That means there are more than two noise ordinance complaints from city residents each day. And while that doesn’t mean police officers wrote 884 noise complaint violations, nor that the noise was specifically coming from vehicles, it’s obvious that excessive noise is a concern for city residents. We’re sure anyone who has been awoken abruptly at 2 or 3 in the morning by a loud vehicle surely won’t disagree with the city’s intention.

But having the best of intentions doesn’t mean the city will end up with the best results. And in this case, frankly, there just aren’t enough police officers to go around to ensure compliance with the new ordinance language.

The Jamestown Police Department responded to 37,396 incidents in 2024, a little more than 102 calls a day. Of those calls, 70.2% were from the community, leaving about 30% found by officers out on patrol. That 30%, by and large, is where enforcement of the city’s updated noise ordinance would come from because loud vehicles are something that has to be caught in the act, not ticketed after a citizen’s complaint.

Whether or not the new noise ordinance language does, indeed, provide relief to the ears of residents will depend entirely on how much time and effort city police officers can give to enforcement. We have a feeling officers will make a good faith effort, but their time is simply too valuable to write tickets to enough drivers of loud vehicles to make the type of difference council members want to make.