City calls for restrictions to Ever After festival
Too loud, too late, and too many drugs and drunks, but city still supports it
KITCHENER — Officials are recommending an earlier close and tougher noise restrictions for the Ever After Music Festival this year, in the wake of a deluge of complaints in 2017.
The electronic music festival, which drew about 38,000 people to Bingemans over three days last June, sparked more than 100 noise complaints and almost 350 police calls.
Bylaw officials at the City of Kitchener are recommending the festival wrap up at 9 p.m. on Sunday rather than 11 p.m. as in the past. The vast majority of the noise complaints came in on the Sunday evening, said Gloria MacNeil, Kitchener’s director of bylaw enforcement.
She is also recommending that the city reduce the maximum allowable noise level to 55 decibels in residential areas, down from 65 decibels. City councillors will consider the recommendations at a committee meeting Monday.
Bylaw officers measure noise from the homes where complaints originate, and this past year, on the Sunday evening of the festival, they recorded readings of more than 60 decibels, MacNeil said.
If council approves the tighter restrictions, bylaw officers will monitor the festival and require organizers to reduce noise levels if they measure any noise readings above 55. Failure to do so would lead to fines, and could affect the city’s willingness to support the festival in future, MacNeil said.
Festival organizer Beyond Oz would bear the estimated $1,200 cost of having a noise officer working for the duration of the festival, MacNeil said.
Beyond Oz says it expects more than 25,000 people, mostly aged 16 to 25, to attend each day of the three-day festival, set to run June 8 to 10 this year.
Coun. Scott Davey, who represents the ward where the festival takes place, said he believes the changes strike a balance. “You have to be careful you don’t reach a point where they can’t put on a show. Last year obviously it was way too loud. It was disrupting people inside their homes.”
Dropping the limit by 10 decibels should produce sound that’s roughly half as loud, he said.
The city is recommending the earlier shutdown in response to residents, MacNeil said.
“Sunday is the night before work. They had been hearing the music all weekend, and they
asked if we would even consider ending early, to allow them to get kids to bed and get ready for the next work day.”
A report from Novus Environmental, a Guelph firm with expertise in acoustics, said that noise complaints in 2017 likely spiked Sunday evening because concert noise seems louder when there’s less ambient noise, as there would be on a Sunday evening.
As well, weather conditions on the Sunday evening were conducive to the sound travelling, Novus said in the report, which it produced free of charge as part of its own research.
Requiring the festival to keep noise levels below 55 decibels in residential areas should result in fewer complaints but won’t likely eliminate them altogether, Novus said.
The number of noise complaints has varied over the years, probably because of differing weather conditions, Davey noted. The 2015 festival prompted 57 noise complaints, while the city received only seven in 2016.
The festival was also the source of hundreds of police calls in 2017.
Police said they responded to 342 calls for service, almost half them drug-related, as well as calls about public drunkenness and other liquor offences.
Police said illicit drugs were plentiful at the festival, and an amnesty bin where people could drop off drugs without penalty was overflowing, but overall most people were co-operative and the event was peaceful, with police laying nine charges.
Twenty-four people were taken to hospital for extreme drug and alcohol intoxication — twice the number of ambulance calls seen at the festival in 2016.