Public Safety tickets St. James Gate, arrests manager
by Bill Davis | Contributing Writer
City of Folly Beach Public Safety Chief Andrew Gilreath and his officers recently put some more teeth into the existing noise ordinance on Folly Beach.
On a recent Friday night, they went and informed St. James Gate Irish Pub that their music and noise coming out of the restaurant and bar area was too loud.
The next night, Saturday night, they showed up at 11:30 p.m., a half-hour past the current ordinance’s limits for noise, and gave the manager a $500 ticket and later arrested her for taking too long to respond to their presence.
The nightspot has since retained legal council, local attorney Nick Thomas, to represent their manager and challenge the ordinance. Thomas has requested a jury trial later this fall, rather than just arguing before a judge.
Thomas is already arguing that the current ordinance is “too broad and burdensome.” But he admits that it was public knowledge that St. James Gate, as well as Snapper Jack’s across Center Street had been the target of noise complaints by the public for going on two years.
Thomas is also alleging that Gilreath acted on a Mayor Tim Goodwin-ordered policy change after the mayor didn’t get his way on a recent City Council vote on a new, more scientific noise ordinance. Thomas adds that he will demand city email records to prove this.
Chief Gilreath says Goodwin had nothing to do with the ticketing, and says the department changed its policy after delivering the ticket to St. James Gate. Additionally, the chief says the limits of permissible sound his officers are currently using is 85 decibels, well above the 75 decibels mark the proposed ordinance would have used.
By comparison, 85 decibels would represent a louder garbage disposal, while 75 decibels would be like listening to a car passing by at 65 miles per hour at a distance of 25 feet.
Gilreath says he made the decision to give a warning the night before and then wait for 30 minutes after the noise cutoff “to make sure no one was getting a raw deal.” Additionally, the night before, he educated the bar’s management that they could shut windows and take other actions to reduce their sound footprint.
But after what he saw as a fair warning, and having educated management, and the widespread public knowledge of the situation, Gilreath saw no other option than to ticket St. James Gate.
The decision to arrest the manager came after what Gilreath thought was a too-long amount of time to deal with his presence and complaints. But, he says, “I get it; she doesn’t want to personally get the ticket.”
State laws back local ordinances throughout South Carolina, that whoever is responsible for the actions in a bar or restaurant, gets the ticket. That’s why when the State Law Enforcement Department (SLED) officers do a sweep of local bars trying to catch minors being served, the waitress or the bartender bears the hefty fine, and not the establishment.
But, the chief says of the arrest, in which the manager was apparently trying to get owner John Teevan to come from home and handle the situation, “it’s not like the FBI coming after her … we were not trying to pick on her.”
Teevan deferred comment for this story to Thomas.
The good news is, from Gilreath’s perspective, that the noise levels have dropped since the ticketing and arrest, though not necessarily because of them. “The ‘season’ is winding down,” he says, adding that what the situation needed was for the “reset” button to be hit.
The bad news, from Thomas’ perspective is that all of this could have been handled by Goodwin “sitting down and having a conversation” with all the affected businesses along Center Street.
Mayor Goodwin also declined to comment for this article.
Thomas challenges that the ordinance’s definition of “noise” was not met, in that no resident in a house filed a complaint the nights of the warning or the ticketing and arrest.
City Council has been wrestling with a new ordinance, but the mayor himself cast the deciding “nay” vote that quashed it last month after ammendments were added to the original oridinance.
Thomas also argues that the arrested manager was not trying to create an undue delay, and that she was merely “caught off guard” by the whole incident.
City Councilman DJ Rich spearheaded the proposed noise ordinance, and says that after two years of complaints, coupled with announcements on the city’s Facebook page, discussion at Folly Association of Business (FAB) meetings, stories in The Folly Current, the onus is on the business owner.
Rich owns and runs Planet Follywood a half block down and across the street from St. James Gate and Snapper Jack’s.
That means sometime this fall, Thomas may have to argue his case in front of 12 locals who’ve been affected by the volume of noise emitted by St. James Gate.
“I only have to find one that agrees with me,” he says.
