The program for the evening was presented by two of Arlington's Community Inspectors, Inspectors Pugh (Barcroft and vicinity) and Avant. Their telephone number is 703-228-3232.

The inspectors are responsible for Arlington's Code Enforcement. They have four main ordinances to enforce:

• Building code
• Zoning
• Care of premises (trash, dead cars)
• Noise

• Blight program
• Full Code Comprehensive Inspection Program (a "blitz" approach for multi-unit properties)

• POD's are ok under the Arlington ordinances as temporary structures, whether in the driveway or on the street.
• Overcrowding of a home is defined as more than four unrelated adults.
• The inspectors can use tickets instead of taking someone to court when it involves either cars or trash.

A group of neighbors who live around the schoolyard made it clear that they are very upset with the school's response to their complaints about the Musical Garden, an installation that includes six conga-style drums of varying sizes, a marimba and five eight-foot-high chimes. (Collectively they are referred to as "the drums.")

The neighbors began complaining about noise five months ago when the garden was installed. The school responded by damping the drum sound with sand, mulch and foam. The neighbors continued to find the noise irritating, particularly when miscreant teens discovered the installation and began playing the instruments at all hours and on weekends. But the school apparently felt that it had responded to the complaints and let things slide. When the drums are played just by hand they are still loud enough to produce an echo from the school wall, and using a mallet they are louder. A four year old can turn the soft bong of the chimes into a jarring crash by using the side of the steel stick instead of the soft plastic head on the end as an adult would do.

The school's neighbors wanted a Barcroft School and Civic League resolution requesting the County Manager to have the drums removed under the noise ordinance. One of the inspectors had checked the noise by walking around the block with a decibel meter and said from the sidewalk in front of the complaining houses he did not see a problem. He did not explain why he did not check the noise at the school's boundary, the worst case. The complaints are about after-hours and weekend noise. The neighbors have not complained about the normal level of playground noise at Barcroft during school activities.

Principal Miriam Hughey-Guy is out of town, and given the neighborhood's tremendous respect for her it would have been hasty to take any formal action at this meeting without hearing from her. Assistant Principal Sandra Lochhead spoke but was unable to commit to anything. The school has apparently put in a work order for some sort of enclosure for the garden, but she was not able to tell us what would become of that. She said Miriam had asked her to schedule a meeting for the 19th at 7pm at Barcroft School, and the neighbors agreed to that. Sandra thought that it would be possible to remove the heads from the drums until the issue is resolved, and we passed a resolution expressing the sense of the meeting that all of the instruments including the drums, chimes and marimba, should be disabled pending resolution of the noise problem. The PTA representative, Andrew Hunter, felt that the meeting had been packed with angry neighbors (a flyer had been circulated just to the homes on the block) and the PTA members did not know about it in time to roust out their troops, resulting in a lopsided vote.

We are now focused on the meeting on the 19th as the next step. The neighbors noted that the original Parks Enhancement grant was for a Sensory Garden in the front of the school and did not mention drums. And the noise ordinance has other criteria beyond decibel levels. There were other issues, but one neighbor asked why we were debating side issues when the central issue is should an elementary school ever install percussion instruments in a small schoolyard.

Update on October 7: The school has removed the drum heads, covered both the drums and the marimba with plastic, and removed the mallets. The only instruments remaining operable are the chimes, and a miscreant wanting to bash those to maximum volume would have to bring along hard sticks to do that.

This summary has not been approved by the BSCL.


Prepared by: Randy Swart, October 7, 2006

This page was revised on: October 6, 2006.