Portland International Raceway Subcommittee Meeting

Noise Review Board Subcommittee

Portland International Raceway Agenda

Tuesday, January 17, 2023, 6:00 PM

Meeting Minutes

January 17, 2023 Noise Review Board-PIR Subcommittee Meeting Summary

Present:

• Mary Sipe, NRB Chair
• Ryan Pittel, Neighbor Representative
• Marty Knowles, Neighbor Representative
• Angela Moos, Neighbor Representative
• Charles Freeborn, PIR User Representative
• Jason Henshaw, PIR User Representative
• Nichole Gamell, PIR Management Representative
• Ron Huegli PIR Management Representative
• Paul Van Orden, Noise Office Consultant to Subcommittee
• Kerrie Standlee, Acoustic Specialist Consultant to Subcommittee
• Mark Wiggington, Former PIR Management Consultant to Subcommittee
• Jill Monroe, Katz & Associates-Facilitator

After calling the meeting to order, Chair Sipe turned the meeting over to Jill Monroe to facilitate.

Mary Sipe presented her observations from a visit to Kenton neighborhood & Trenton Park area during PIR Enduro event on October 15, 2022.

Mary Sipe reported that she and Noise Officer, Paul Van Orden visited the Kenton neighborhood on October 15^th during the Cascade Enduro race. Mary said she spent about 31/2 - 4 hours driving all around the area near the location of the noise meter on North Tyndall and near Trenton Park.

She reported that she drove up and down the streets with her car window down and would stop periodically and get out of the car and just listen. As she drove around and periodically stopped to listen the noise would come and go. She said she would hear it fairly loudly at one location and a block down the street or around the corner, she could not hear it at all.

She went to the location of the noise meter on North Tyndall and got out of the car and walked around where the noise meter is mounted on a pole. Standing on the sidewalk and in the street near where the noise meter is mounted, the sound from the racetrack was very faint. There was a lot of background noise…crows cawing for example.

Mary described the street where the noise meter is located as a dead-end street with houses crammed together on both sides of the street. There is a lot of ambient noise.

Mary reported that as she walked north, down the hill to the cul-de-sac at the end of the street, the noise from the racetrack got louder and louder.

She asked a person who was working in their yard about the noise from the racetrack and he said “it drives us crazy. I filed many complaints but nothing happened so I stopped complaining.”

Mary ended the afternoon at Trenton Park. She spent about an hour at Trenton Park. She said she could hear the noise from the racetrack very clearly there and there was virtually no background noise at that location.

Paul arrived at Trenton Park about an hour later and set up his noise meter and began taking readings. Paul and Mary talked briefly and then Mary left Paul to take noise measurements.

Mary commented that her visit to the site of the Kenton noise meter made her question the value of the data from the noise meter at that location due to the amount of ambient noise. She suggested that the Noise Office consider relocating the noise meter to a location like Trenton Park. She also commented that she would suggest installing an additional noise meter and to use the geographical locations of where most of the noise complaints are coming from to help determine where to locate an additional noise meter.  She said that in her opinion, watching the live Kenton noise meter readings on the PIR website could be giving neighbors a false impression. This seems to be supported by the acoustic consultants’ investigations into some of the noise complaints when after listening to the recordings from the Kenton noise meter, it has been determined that it is not racetrack sounds, but crows and train horns etc.

Noise Control Officer Paul Van Orden gave a presentation of his October 15, 2022 environmental sound level reading and observations of a non-varianced enduro race as monitored from Trenton Park at 4 to 4:36 PM. 

Chair Mary Sipe was present at the park when Officer Van Orden set up the monitoring equipment and observed the weather conditions.  On October 15^th, in a 36 minute time period, 7 examples of sound specific to automotive racing at Portland International Raceway were observed by Officer Van Orden and noted to be in exceedance of a 65 decibel (dBA FAST) sound level in a region of Open Space and Residential Zoning. 

Officer Van Orden also noted that there were additional exceedances of 65 decibels (dBA FAST) in the Residential and Open Space Zoned areas coming from Portland International Speedway, but those occurred while other neighborhood sounds were observed at the same time.  Those exceedances were excluded from the count of 7 instances in which specific racetrack sounds exceeding 65 decibels at Trenton Park occurred with no other sounds. The observations on site at Trenton Park included staff observations and the collected environmental data. 

During the presentation, Officer Van Orden visually showed graphs of the collected sound data which depicted the difference between the racetrack sound spikes in the neighborhood and other neighborhood ambient sound influences such as: intermittent train sounds and infrequent automotive, small truck and motorcycles passing on the nearby local streets.

Officer Van Orden explained how one could see the unique tonal quality of different sounds on the graphs, such as bass intensive trains passing by just North of Columbia, airplanes or other sounds not associated with automotive racing from PIR. These tonal “signatures” are referred to as spectral or octave band sound level data.  That part of the data collected matches perfectly with the audible and visual observations on site at Trenton Park.

The Noise Officer noted that there was not an effective way in the Zoom virtual meeting to adequately play the audio recorded portion of the City’s environmental sound level readings which are synced up with the noise data.    The Noise Officer will be working to make a video presentation of the data so each NRB PIR subcommittee member can more closely review the audio portion of the collected information from October 15, 2023.  The video is anticipated to be presented to the subcommittee before the March 2023 monthly meeting.

Mr. Van Orden noted that the 7 exceedances of 65 decibels in the neighborhood illustrate exactly what past Noise Control Officer Dr. Paul Herman, Officer Van Orden and the Greenbusch Group Inc. (among other acoustical experts) have referred to as the long-term concern that a standard of 103 decibel trackside may be allowing sound levels in excess of “Industrial to Residential” sound levels described in Title 18.10.010 A. Figure one below.  The “Industrial to Residential” sound level in Title 18 of the Portland City Code is 65 decibels (dBA FAST maximum) for a sound emanating from an Industrial sound source to a Residential or Open Space type Land Use Zone. City Parks are generally zoned open space.   

Below is Figure 1 from Title 18.10.010 A.

Figure 1 highlights the daytime sound levels (7 AM to 10 PM) allowed from an Industrial zone to a Residential/ Open Space zoned property.  These sound levels are measured at the Receiver’s property line. It is important to note that for over 30 years, the City has measured racecar sound at trackside, not the receiver’s property line as a proxy for meeting the 65 dBA at the property line.

A.  The sound levels established are as set forth in Figure 1 before any adjustments are applied:

FIGURE 1 ( COMMERCIAL ZONING Removed  for ease of reading Figure 1)

PERMISSIBLE SOUND LEVELS

(7 am-10 pm, otherwise minus 5 dBA) 

Officer Van Orden reported the peaks for seven sounds uniquely attributed to racetrack noise were at the following times and maximum decibel levels:

Trenton Park Sounds levels from PIR racing sounds on Saturday October 15, 2022

Officer Van Orden also noted the value of a location such as Trenton Park to help capture sound levels from racing around the entire racecourse, as compared to collecting readings from both drag races and road course races.   Trenton Park could be a location to add a second community sound level meter to monitor sound levels.  (Trenton Park was one of the main 4 original locations for consideration for installing the Kenton community noise meter, but no pole or installation point could be made available to mount a long term environmental noise meter at that time.)   The peak sound levels noted on this date at the Kenton meter on a utility pole at 8715 North Tyndall were not peaking at as high a decibel level as were experienced in Trenton Park.

Agenda item #2- Discuss potential Subcommittee recommendation regarding completion and/or update of the Greenbusch Study.

There was discussion about a possible subcommittee recommendation to complete or update the 2008 Greenbusch Study.

Ryan Pittel suggested the Greenbusch Study be updated to only include data directly related to noise from events at PIR.

Mary Sipe agreed that the study should focus just on PIR, She pointed out that Greenbusch or some other Acoustic Firm could help to validate the question if a trackside decibel limit of 103 actually equates to 65 decibels in the neighborhood.  Mary also commented that the cost to update the Greenbusch Study should not be as significant if the focus is just on noise from PIR and not all of the noise sources in the North Portland community.

Agenda Item #3 Discuss draft Subcommittee Progress Report/Summary

Mary Sipe asked for subcommittee members feedback on the draft report she sent.

Kerrie Standlee had some suggestions about the order of the information from the 2010 Kenton Neighborhood Association Survey, the 2008 Greenbusch Study and the 2006 Grove Insight Survey.

Mary explained to the Subcommittee that one of the purposes of a Progress Report and Summary is to assist the subcommittee in reviewing their findings and using that information to help in identifying possible recommendations. She asked subcommittee members to keep this in mind as they review the draft report and make note of items, they see that could become subcommittee recommendations. She explained the final progress report will be delivered to the Noise Review Board to keep them informed about the progress of the subcommittee. The report will also help to inform the subcommittee final report and recommendations.

Agenda Item #4 Updated Task List

• Review Status and Subcommittee Assignments
• Next Steps

Jill went through the Task List with the subcommittee and confirmed assignments and due dates for reports & updates by subcommittee members:

Task List #3 - Identifyall sound generating activities that take place at PIR

Confirmed Kerrie & Marty will present report at March meeting- moved to April

Task List #4 - 2022 Noise Office & PIR noise complaint data report

Confirmed Paul & Nikki will present 2022 Noise Complaint data at February meeting

Task List # 7 d. - Resolution #34626

Confirmed Kerrie & Mary will give in depth review at March meeting moved to April

Jill called for public comment – no comments.

• Jill: adjourned the meeting.

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