Rodeo noise irks neighbors

Expo fields complaints during weekend events

By KEVIN COURTNEY
Register Staff Writer

Slammed by loud music on Sunday afternoons and evenings from Mexican rodeos, neighbors are asking

Napa Valley Expo to turn down the sound.

Homes east of Silverado Trail hear five and a half hours of live bands, bullriding and an exuberant PA announcer when the Mexican rodeo comes to town.

“It is an invasion,” said Shelly Nelson, a resident on Fairview Drive. She normally likes living by the fairgrounds and doesn’t mind the sounds of the Napa Town and Country Fair in August, but these rodeos are something else, she said.

“My room is the farthest room. I can hear it perfectly. I can hear everything. The windows rattle,” said Shelly Nelson, her 14-year-old daughter.

“I assure you Sunday afternoons are ruined,” said Charles Vincent of Capitola Court. Vincent insisted he’s not a noise prude, but rodeo cacophony is “over the top.”

Napa police received more than a dozen complaints during the first rodeo of the season on April 20, said Sgt. Don Honey. “Officers went into the Alta Heights area and said it was pretty bad,” he said.

The volume was turned down when police contacted Expo CEO Joe Anderson, Honey said. Other than noise, the rodeos have been disturbance-free this year, he said.

Police did not more directly intervene because the Expo, as a state-owned facility, is not subject to city noise standards, Honey said. “We don’t have any rules that say what they can do on state property,” he said.

Napa Mayor Jill Techel, who received angry calls at City Hall, said she could sympathize with residents. “We’re concerned about quality of life, the ability to have a barbecue in your backyard without noise from another event,” she said.

CEO Anderson told Expo directors this week that he will be talking with police and residents to see whether a tighter rein needs to be placed on outdoor sound.

The Expo has been hosting loud events for decades, including weekly motorcycle races that stopped more than a decade ago, Anderson said. Outdoor concerts are always problematic, he said.

“You go to any live concert and it’s loud,” Anderson said in an interview. “That’s what a live concert is.”

Several factors may explain the surge in complaints over the rodeos, Anderson told directors. For one thing, the Expo at Third and Silverado is surrounded by more newcomers who don’t necessarily appreciate that the fairgrounds were there first.

Cultural issues may be coming into play, Anderson said. Rodeo are announced in high-decibel Spanish. The music is Mexican as well.

“If it were country-and-western music, I don’t think we’d have as many complaints or as much resistance to it,” he said.

Haley Nelson said having her home awash in Spanish contributed to the problem. “I wouldn’t mind if I could understand it,” she said.

Vincent agreed that the problem may have a cultural dimension, but said the main issue was volume.

There is no entertainment equivalent to a Mexican rodeo in the Anglo community, Anderson said. “It’s a combination rodeo-slash-concert-slash-dance,” he said.

April’s event drew 1,100 people who paid between $30 and $44 for almost six hours of entertainment, Anderson said. May’s rodeo attracted 700. Rodeos run from 3 to 8:30 p.m., he said.

Mexican rodeos have been happening on and off for years, Anderson said. He has booked five rodeos this year — basically one a month during good weather — with promoter Raul Rivas of San Leandro. The next one is June 15.

The promoter pays the Expo a minimum of $1,800 per event, with the Expo earning extra money from beer and food sales.

Rivas, who runs rodeos in Napa and in Oakland near McAfee Coliseum, was turned down earlier this month when he applied to move his Oakland events to Castro Valley.

Citing problems at Rivas rodeos in the 1990s, the Hayward Area Recreation and Park District refused to let him return to the Rowell Ranch Rodeo Park from which he was banned in 1999.

Hayward offered to let Rivas put on rodeos if alcohol were eliminated and music were scaled back, but Rivas said that wouldn’t work, according to a report on InsideBayArea.com. “In our culture we have music with the rodeo,” he told the board.

Register efforts to reach Rivas’ organization for comment were unsuccessful.

The Expo insists that noise not exceed 90 decibels at a point 100 feet from the source, said Anderson, who said he carries a decibel meter during events. Noise at recent rodeos was under 90 decibels “95 percent of the time,” he said.

Rodeos feature three to four bands. Some groups will crank it up and have to be told to dial it back, he said.

The rodeos are the loudest events on the Expo’s schedule except for the August fair, Anderson said. “In my opinion they’re quieter than the Plaza Stage at fair time,” he said.

If the Expo were a regular commercial enterprise under city control, it would be limited to 60 decibels at the property line, Honey said.

Sixty decibels is the equivalent of conversational speech, while 90 decibels in similar to the sound of a heavy truck.

Acoustics at the fairgrounds aren’t always predictable, Anderson said. Wind can carry the sound. Although the grandstand speakers face west, music and PA announcements can bounce off the bleachers into east Napa, he said.

Anderson said he would be talking to other fairgrounds about how they control noise near neighborhoods. He is forming a committee involving directors, police and residents to study the issue.

“We will sit down and talk to our neighbors,” Anderson said. “I don’t want them to be our enemies.”

He will report back to the board on June 24 at 1 p.m. with his recommendations.

Almost any outdoor event at the Expo generates police calls, even the Home and Garden Show earlier this month, Honey said.

“We tell people if you live next to a fairgrounds these events will happen time to time,” Honey said. “They think if you can hear it, it’s a violation. That’s not the case.”

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