Restaurant Manager opts to not let the music play
Solan: Required Sound Mitigation Engineer report too costly
Where has the music gone?
Businesses in Asbury Park’s Central Business District recently received a letter instructing them that Asbury Park requires a sound mitigation report in order to play music in their establishments.
The required acoustic engineering report will cost a minimum of $1000, on top of which are the $500 in escrow for someone to read said report, and a $25 application fee.
So all in, the City of Asbury Park, which advertises itself as a hip, music-loving town, is asking a business to pay $1525 to play background music. Background music which, in our case, you would be hard pressed to hear over the patrons.
Allegedly, there were noise complaints for a new restaurant in town which resulted in a fine being issued. It seems the owner took exception to this and decided to give the city a list of all the businesses in town who play music, from boutiques to coffee shops to restaurants, thereby dragging every other business in town under the proverbial bus with him.
Regardless of how this came about, asking every business, no matter how small, to pay this exorbitant sum, on top of the annual mercantile license the city requires, is patently ridiculous.
In most of these places the music is low enough that it can barely be heard over normal conversation. Our business has no intention of shelling out over $1,500 to essentially play the radio.
Instead, we are willing to not play music and I expect many other small businesses will follow suit, leaving our hip, music-loving town to shop and dine in silence until more reasonable minds prevail in the town leadership.
Adam Solan
Oakhurst
[This letter represents the opinion of its writer and is not representative of any opinion of the Asbury Park Sun staff. All readers are welcome to submit Letters to the Editor to news@asburyparksun.com for our consideration. For guidelines on letter-writing and submission, click here.]
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