Letter: No Globe Alliance lays out plan

The following is an email sent to both the South Lake Tahoe City Council and the SnowGlobe Music Festival organizers:

1. Independent Engineer:
- a. Repeat previous dB tests for comparison

- b. Establish new dB tests and standards
- c. Establish Sound Czar with authority to adjust volume or end performance of artist
2. Must have standards, monitoring and fines for violations that are independently en-forced with a mechanism to have complaints responded to within 20 minutes of being reported (no unattended phone number for complaints).
3. Noise Engineering per Presentation.
4. Sounds Cut Off:
a. 10 PM first two nights
b. 12:15 in final night, New Year
5. Sound Check no earlier than 10 AM.
6. Laser show rather than Fireworks.
7. No additional non-sports events on Community fields – play field is for athletics first.
8. This event should not be allowed to grow further – 20,000 ticket maximum.
9. If field covering fails to protect the fields – the contract will not be renewed and is ter-minated for future events.
10. City not responsible for storage of any event related equipment.
11. Protect employees by adhering to OSHA noise exposure limits.
12. Drug Free Coalition provided vendor space, free of charge.
13. Declare it a Drug Free event in honor of Allysia Burn, with permission of her family.
14. Contingency Plan for Residents should sound mitigation fail.

Our goal is to use the coming year to establish real, enforceable sound regulations that could be used going forward based on professional review and not simply the arbitrary sound value, 95 dB, currently in place. This cannot happen without independent sound consulting provided by the City of South Lake Tahoe given both residents and SnowGlobe have countervailing objectives.

The No Globe Alliance is open to seeing this as an inaugural year for evaluating sound due to changes in the sound engineering as presented by SnowGlobe to the City Council on March 6th. So long as there is a mechanism to independently measure, monitor and adjust sound amplifi-cation to mutually agreeable limits. This requires independent staff that are sound profession-als and not simply available City staff, using calibrated equipment located around the venue perimeter. The existing sound restrictions are unanimously seen as ineffective and should be thrown out. As a starting point, sound restrictions used at other outdoor venues in other munic-ipalities should be reviewed in consultation with an Independent Audio Consultant and the City of South Lake Tahoe. SnowGlobe presents shows around the country and should have example sound restrictions that can be provided as a template to create baseline restrictions for the 2018 SnowGlobe event in South Lake Tahoe, with the City of South Lake Tahoe having final say on what levels are appropriate. Understanding that baseline sound restrictions for the coming year will need to be flexible with the intent to establish standards that could be used in follow-ing years, should this event be renewed. This year will require a mechanism to adjust sound levels to meet the common goal of providing an entertaining event while also not adversely impacting residents.

The No Globe Alliance feels that protecting our public fields whose primary use is outdoor ath-letics is non-negotiable. The equipment used to protect our fields is fully the responsibility of SnowGlobe and the City of South Lake Tahoe has no obligation to provide funding, space, staff-ing or other resources outside of those already defined to meet inspection needs and assist in the delivery of heavy equipment and supplies to the venue. Should the fields again suffer major damage requiring restoration of more than 25% of the field, future events should be canceled and the contract nullified. No other events of this type should be allowed on any of our public fields.

Fire is a major concern to local residents. We believe SnowGlobe could offer a safe laser show on all three nights rather than using fireworks over our forests. This would have the added ben-efit of not requiring the same level of fire protection for the event and possibly reduce costs. One stray firework rocket could result in catastrophic loss and a laser show is a viable alterna-tive as evidenced by the Labor Day laser show at Lakeview Commons. Using an alternative to fireworks will also help protect our environment by preventing chemicals and debris from fire-works from ending up in the forest, streams, or the lake. Each year the LTVA has a fireworks cleanup after 4th of July just for this reason and three days of fireworks substantially increases the risk of polluting our fragile environment.

The youth attending this event and associated drug use are a concern. We fully support Rock Med’s presence at this event and are happy they are able to serve attendees. We request that the South Tahoe Drug Free Coalition be provided space within the venue at no charge to share information with our local youth and share information with attendees in honor of Alyssa Byrne (with the permission of her parents, should they agree to this). We encourage SnowGlobe to declare this a drug free event publicly and in their promotional material. We also request more thorough searches of attendees by SnowGlobe security personnel.

The tax payers of South Lake Tahoe are currently subsidizing this event. Should the contract be extended it should do so without further subsidies. We know of no other local event that is funded to this degree with tax payer funds. That this event has so negatively impacted our residents who pay taxes which fund this event is not appropriate. Multiple local and Nevada area businesses have been very vocal on the need for this event and expressed how positively impacted their businesses. The City Council should seek required funding from those entities claiming $14 million dollars in earned income from this event to sustain it going forward.

- No Globe Alliance