Portland International Raceway Subcommittee Meeting

Noise Review Board Subcommittee

Portland International Raceway Agenda

Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023, 6:00 PM

Agenda

Welcome and Call to Order                                 

Item 1: Presentation on PIR complaint data from 2022
Item 2: Receive final Subcommittee Progress Report/Summary
Item 3: Discuss potential Subcommittee recommendations and consensus
Item 4: Next Steps

Public Comment

How to Join Meeting

The Noise Review Board Subcommittee is currently held virtually. You are invited to join via ZOOM. Passcode 370478.  You can also call by your location- 877 853 5257 US Toll-free or 888 475 4499 US Toll free, Meeting ID: 440 324 9207.

Public Testimony

The public is invited to attend the meeting and to give testimony in support or opposition to agenda items. Written testimony must include your full name and address and can also be submitted via e-mail to variances@portlandoregon.gov, Attn: Noise Board.

Accommodations

If accommodations are needed, please email variances@portlandoregon.gov at least 5 days before the meeting.

Meeting Minutes

Noise Review Board Subcommittee on PIR

February 21, 2023

Meeting Summary

Present:

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

Meeting Notes:

Item 1: Presentation on PIR Noise Complaint received by the Noise Office 2022

• Noise Officer, PaulVan Orden gave a summary of noise complaints regarding PIR events received by the Noise Office during 2022.
• Two different sets of complaints that Subcommittee members received:
  • A series of complaints related to the varianced events.
    • The NASCAR race weekend: June 3-4, 2022.
      • Two complaints for June 4^th.
    • The Rose Cup weekend: July 9-10, 2022.
      • Three complaints.
    • The SVRA race weekend: July 14-17, 2022.
      • Six complaints.
    • The IndyCar race weekend: September 1-4, 2022.
      • Four complaints.
    • SOVREN.
      • Three complaints: two for noise pollution and one for air pollution.
    • Overall: 12 different individuals complaining.
  • A series of complaints for non-varianced events.
    • Overall: 45 complaints over 26 race days, nine different individuals.
  • Overall, for varianced and non-varianced: 17 people total complaining about the races.
  • PIR continues to be the most significant source of noise in the City from a single location.
    • 17 complaints on PIR: not the same people every year. Renewed and new complaints each year.
      • If we are not addressing the complaint, they may still be impacted by the sound, but will stop complaining since the system is not working, but will speak at City Council that their issue hasn’t been addressed.
      • No patterns for races.
      • Need for empathy.
      • Most call once per day.
      • Races in compliance can still make too much noise in the neighborhood.
• Questions: Kerrie – is it possible to generate a figure that shows the locations of the complaints for the different races discussed in the data? It may be helpful to determine a pattern of which part of the community these complaints are coming from.
  • Paul: Absolutely, I’m sure we can work with a GIS associate to get assistance with that. No exact addresses, just general areas. Will chat with Kareen to see if they can do that.
• Angela – looked at Jason’s information and checked the cross-sections at Trenton Park, which goes back to what Mary and Paul did in October. A lot are coming from as far as St. John’s and Portsmouth, so something is going on that is reaching loud sound levels. It seems to be pointing toward the back side of the track. That was surprising to me.
• Jason – wants to share a quick analysis he did on the complaint data. Raises some questions to what Paul provided. Shared his screen.
• Jason – extracted all of the data from Paul and put it in a common table. You can sort it however you want. Overview of data in a nutshell. 64 overall complaints over the whole year. A few folks are launching most of the complaints throughout the entire season. It shows the amount of people and how many times they complained.
• Mary –When you point out that three individuals have filed a majority of the complaints, what do you think that tells us about the complaints? What is the significance of that?
  • Jason – I just noticed that pattern, it jumped out when looking at the data.
• Kerrie – asked that Jason send a copy of the excel spreadsheet to the group. Helpful in his and Marty’s analysis.
• Mary – has been going through the calendar on the PIR website and identifying which events the complaints are related to for the three repeat complainers. Shared her screen of an analysis on the three individuals most impacted. She suggested that subcommittee members read through every single comment. Their health is being impacted; it is really affecting them on a personal level.
• Angela – wanted to emphasize on the record that it was not her, Marty or Ryan that reported more than one incident this summer with a complaint.
• Charles – do any of the complaints on the five varianced events corroborate, or are they confirmed with data readings from noise meters – either track side or the neighborhood meter?

Also, how far back has the City been collecting noise information and complaints? Can we go back 20 years? Is there any record keeping as to people complaining about noise of all types, specifically the raceway. Thinks we should throw out the air pollution complaint from SOVREN race.

• • Paul – the races reported their minor exceedances when they applied for their noise variances. They were very minor points during the variances that there might have been exceedances. There were no significant exceedances of the variance levels that were approved by the city's noise, review board.

We could probably go back further than 20 or 30 years. There may be periods of time where it was not as intensively collected. There were a number of different times, like when we were doing the Greenbush study, that there would have been much more intense data collection, and that is definitely something that we could discuss and explore. The history of PIR complaints and the data collection has surfaced when we're in a period of more intensely studying the issue. So, the Greenbusch period would be one of those time periods where there would have been much more intense study. There is data throughout the period, but there will be much better data during the intense study periods.

• Marty – many people do not complain. Maybe we could do something with the data you took in October that wasn’t a varianced event, and say that it reaches 65, 70 in the neighborhood, what was it on track side? Rather than talking about the varianced races. Let's talk about just a normal race.
  • Paul – that’s why we separated out varianced and non-varianced. Our challenge now is that was the intention to dive into all of this. Until someone rectifies the access to the data, we may not be able to get the trackside date or the Kenton meter data until PIR and Parks has an acoustical firm selected to access that meter. It’s the same meter we use in the noise office. Not unless the Noise Office got into the server that has the 10 years of data to be able to get it, which I'm not opposed to doing, especially if the subcommittee thought that would be helpful.
  • Mary – doesn’t think the Subcommittee is aware that the consultant is no longer contracted with PIR. That is why Paul is unable to get data right now.
  • Paul – the Noise Review Board asked for specific data relative to varianced events and it wasn’t in the format they had asked for, so we went back and forth to get the data right. They asked for the data in a more simplified way to make it easier and the contract with the acoustical firm had ended, so there was no way to get the data from the meters to the Board. That’s a recent development and a unique challenge right now.
  • Marty – thinks what we’re doing is good, but if you live closer to Columbia Boulevard, it’s going to affect you more. Varianced races are approved to be loud. Marty said he knows the last race checked in October went over and wants to look at the trackside levels and get straight to the point to wrap things up. Looking at complaints is great, knowing where they are is great. It’s loud, we know it’s loud, let’s figure out what to do rather than saying where complainants live, it seems like kind of a waste of time. Less focus on past complaints and more on what we’re going to do to change it.
• Kerrie – wanted to clarify Charles’ question, not sure Paul answered it correctly.
  • Charles – wanted to know whether during the events that we receive these complaints, was the track in violation of the City code. Did it exceed the allowed varianced sound level?
  • Paul – people know there is a variance. They ask why we’re giving people a noise variance.
• Angela – thinks it’s significant that there are so many complaints about the non-varianced races. Concerned about what’s going on out of PIR. Thinks there’s an education that needs to go out of the PIR before. The Oregon Trail Race was really loud. More complaints about non-varianced races is very significant.
  • Paul – there’s a more interesting question that we should be asking as a Subcommittee: if we’re seeing a pattern that I’ve been talking about for more than 20 years (the Greenbush study, Dr. Herman) – there are points where this level exceeds the City code for what we would want a residential neighbor to experience from an industrial property (i.e. October race) – do we need to reexamine the trackside level in order to balance things out at a level we would expect for industrial zoning to emanate to residential zoning over any distance. How do we balance things out and use science – something that may be different that helps us manage that. How do we collectively come up with solutions?
• Mary – referenced Charles question. Wants to remind everybody that the reason we’re looking at this and the reason the Subcommittee was formed is not to be searching for violation, but to be searching for data that tells us what noise levels are in the community when we have these different decibel levels set at the trackside. Even if it is not an exceedance or violation of the decibel levels for the varianced events, we still need to understand that the whole purpose when resolution 34626 was adopted by City Council was to try to lower the decibel level, and I can see that over the years the decibel levels for some of these events have been lowered.

When looking at this data, it does not make a complaint valid or invalid if they have a variance. Complaints are telling us that, whether they have a variance of not, the level of noise is causing a disturbance and disrupting people’s lives. Our goal is to identify methods that can mitigate the sound – that’s part of why looking at this data is helping us identify what types of events are causing the most reaction from the community, and how do we identify ways to reduce the sound – noise barriers? Based on observations shared last month about the Kenton noise meter - we have got a new season coming up, and we have some opportunities that we need to seize this year to get out there more often and take some noise meter readings like from Trenton Park, and then take the same readings over where the Kenton meter is at on north Tyndall.

If you look at the complaints that we have asked the acoustic consultant to investigate, most of the time, his report comes back after he listens to the recordings at the Kenton meter that it was a train horn, a crow or construction in the neighborhood. We have those graphs from the 4 varianced events that show us that the Noise Review board used when they were reviewing the 2023 variances. One of my comments and observations about the neighborhood meter is that it does not appear to be giving us accurate information in that location. When I stood where the meter is, I could barely hear the racetrack. When I walked down to the end of the block, it was much louder, and while I was at the noise meter, I could hear that the meter was picking up sounds that were not from the racetrack. But when Paul went over to Trenton Park and took noise meter readings, he was picking up sounds that were definitely from the racetrack.

That is another thing we need to keep in mind. This is all going to feed into our recommendations. Paul is supportive of the fact that that we need more than one meter in the neighborhood. We need to ask ourselves if that location of the meter right now is of any value, or if it's giving the people in the community that are watching it on the on the website information that's making them think that there are exceedances at the track. One of the things that these complaints are going to tell us is the location of where the bulk of the complaints are coming from should help to guide us as to where we need to place noise meters in the neighborhood to get more accurate and valid information about what are the true decibel levels in the neighborhood.

• • Ron – clarified that there are four variance events, not five. Noted that the code 34626 under title 18 has set the trackside limit at 105, not 103.this has not been confirmed PIR is trying to be a good neighbor and to realize that there could be a little bit of overage if we went to 105, so we moved it down to 103 to have a buffer. But it is still in code at 105.
  • Kerrie – didn’t see any mention of levels in the code. Trackside decibel levels are not address in Title 18
  • Mary – the 105 comes from DEQ and is not in Title 18 or Resolution #34626 – only 110, 112, and 155 for the variances at trackside. We need to get clarity on that. One way that we can validate that is by having Greenbush or another acoustic engineer do some studies and determine what a 103 or 105 at trackside equate to in the neighborhood, or vice versa.
  • Paul – the issue of the 103 vs. 105 is one that early on, I had flagged that we probably need to do a bit of work at one of our meetings about the 103, 105, because it has an enormous amount of complexity. It's not memorialized in City code as a City code. It has been the operations of the City for a long time using the trackside standard. What does that really mean –is this trackside standard? Because PIR Is the only source in the entire City of Portland that has something completely different that we have been having the track operate under as compared to the rest of the city. What does the City Council want us to do still, and what does this Subcommittee want to recommend to best balance things out?
  • Kerrie – restated what he said last meeting – the 103 came about as a result of drag racing. I was on the board, for all those years the discussion was the DEQ was 105, but does that ensure that the code is met in the neighborhood, and it was determined that it was not. We looked at it, using it for drag racing, 100 DB as the pass by level for individual vehicles, but the fact that there were two vehicles running side by side. We told the people that when they were doing their handheld monitoring, that if they ever hit over 103, they had it exceeded. We knew they would have an exceedance because there was a 35 DB reduction between trackside in the neighborhoods.

It was never intended for road racing at that time. I've talked with Paul Herman recently, and, at that time, we did not have a lot of road racing going on out there. All the road racing was just street legal cars being brought to the racetrack and run around the track, so we didn't worry about road racing at that time. It seems that PIR has had an increase in the number of road racing events occurring, and those events are including cars that are no longer just street legal vehicles. They are bringing in vehicles on trailers that have large engines.

That 103 came about as a result of looking at drag racing alone, and if people would need to, I’ve said before, I'm willing to write up a discussion of this and bring it to the to the committee. We discussed all that after the 1,989 decision was made by the Council to allow for 4 varianced races. We discussed what trackside level could be used for the drag racing, and that would be in the minutes of the meetings between 1990, and 1995, because 1995 is when Paul Herman retired. I'm asking the Noise Control Office to look in their minutes from past meetings and see if they can find the discussions that we have if people need to see this in writing.

• • Jill – I think that is something we can work with the Noise Office to review and identify.
  • Kerrie – if the Committee comes to the conclusion that with the 103, we’re still getting exceedances in the neighborhood of the City code, then we need to put into place a reduction at the track or the vehicles need to have their sound reduced, or a combination of the two.
• Mary – we did have PIR sharing their complaint data on the task list. Will that information be made available to us?
  • Nikki will follow up on this.

Item 2: Receive Final Subcommittee Progress Report/Summary

• Jason – large document. Wants to see if there is a way to get highlights of what’s included in this version.
  • Mary – there were not any changes to the context. The edits Kerrie suggested had to do with the order of the items, wordsmithing, etc. The main thing Kerrie suggested was to take the background and history and make it a cover letter separate from the actual report. Mary said she would like to put a due date on review and input – by next Friday, March 3^rd.
  • Paul – will work with Mary on page 4, where the references are to 103, 105. Wants to tighten up that part.
• Charles – there’s a lot to digest here. I’m not quite ready to send this on to the Noise Review Board yet.
  • Jill – this is more of a last call for thoughts/changes on the progress report.
• Kerrie – thinks it’s a bit too long for a progress report to the Board but will let Mary decide if she wants to have all that stuff in there (i.e. photos, etc.). It might be helpful to put in section headers (i.e. 1.1, 1.2 or A,B,C etc.).
  • Mary – this is a draft. That’s a good idea. It’s so long because it reflects months and months of work. It is a tool for the Subcommittee to help identify possible recommendations. A lot of clear recommendations that are administrative popped up for me in this report.

Item 3: Discuss potential Subcommittee Recommendations and Consensus

• Jill – provided an introduction on this item. Where are those opportunities to begin to identify recommendations that this Subcommittee can provide up to the Noise Review Board? We are hoping to provide recommendations before the racing season begins. Hopes to begin to identify areas of opportunity for recommendations.
• Angela – are we going to discuss resolution 34626? It seems to be at the root of a lot of issues with the variances. Not sure how educated everyone is on that.
  • Mary – scheduled with Kerrie to give an in-depth review of resolution 34626 at the next meeting.
• Kerrie – unsure at this stage how to discuss recommendations and consensus when we have not had a discussion about what mitigation measures may be available, and we don’t know how much reduction we need. We are kind of being asked to shoot in the dark here. I’m wondering if this is a little premature to be talking about this.
  • Mary – there are a lot of things in the progress report that are recommendations. Our only purpose is not just mitigation. There are lots of recommendations in there that are administrative. In terms of mitigation with noise barriers and stuff like that, we haven’t gotten into a conversation about that. Perhaps we could put it on the agenda to speak more specifically to that and how do we get to that. It is not necessarily the Subcommittee’s responsibility to do all the research into that. The recommendation around how we mitigate the noise could probably evolve into a recommendation that Parks & Rec can do this research and a feasibility study about mitigation. There are other things that could be done about mitigation in the task list. We need to have deeper discussions about that, especially with PIR management.
  • Kerrie – could you give an example of what you are expecting to see as far as a recommendation?
  • Mary – a recommendation I would make is that all complaints are funneled into one location. The Noise Office will have a software to help with that. Another would be to realize that resolution 34626 is simply an instruction from City Council for the Noise Review Board to establish a policy. We need to determine how to incorporate that into title 18. We need to codify 103 vs. 105.
  • Kerrie – I’m not hearing recommendation that would help us provide something before the race season starts.
  • Mary – that’s where I think we need to have a concentrated conversation. The big category is mitigation – how do we reduce the noise.
  • Kerrie – that will likely be more than one meeting. PIR folks will want to share how it will impact operations; neighbors will want to see if it will impact their area.
  • Jill – clarified that we want to begin to discuss opportunities to make meaningful impact like simplifying the complaint process, not a complete list of recommendations. The software item is a larger City initiative that is underway with 311 that would specifically update the current system to a new system. If it would be helpful to get a presentation from the City 311 team, we could do that for the next meeting.
  • Jason – we do have to get to the meat of this. Simplifying the complaint process is great as a recommendation, but it doesn’t drive change. It helps you to know, but there is less than 1% of the population complaining. A barrier and changing rules around things might help and lead to some change. Honing in on complaints might help us determine who is most affected, but I do not know if streamlining the process will do much. I would like to get to more tangible things that would actually affect sound.
  • Jill – make recommendations, particularly on things like the sound barrier. This is not exhaustive.
  • Jason – a recommendation would be re-funding a new Greenbush study so we can find out what would make a difference rather than making uneducated guesses. We shouldn’t throw money at doing something that won’t make a difference.
  • Mary – more recommendations could be having a second meter at the trackside, relocating the Kenton meter, or adding another meter in Kenton. We need to start working on those recommendations. Let’s start capturing this. We can make recommendations in phases.
  • Kerrie – has a question for Ron and Nikki – where is the sound meter microphone at trackside located?
  • Ron – the microphone is at the West end of the bleachers.
  • Mary – there are photos of it in the progress report.
  • Kerrie – the way that the queue is set up is not necessarily 50 feet from the side of a track. It's 50 feet from the actual path that the vehicles generally travel. Has that been checked to see what the actual distance is between where the microphone is and where vehicles for road racing is occurring, where the where the general path of the of the vehicles passing by at that location, because I think that was originally set up for the drag racing. I wondered because, looking at the way the road racing is coming in, those vehicles could be further north of the microphone than 50 feet.
  • Ron – if a racer is further north, then they are completely offline, and they're probably going into the hot pit and at that point they would be slowing way down. Any car that comes out of 12, a road race car, they are actually going to be closer to the microphone than drag racers would be, because they are going to be right up against the wall. Charles is an instructor there, and he would most likely concur with that as well. If you would be to the far, what we call drivers right, since the track goes in counterclockwise circulation, you would be furthest away from the microphone, and that would be completely offline, and most generally, you would be going into the hot pit.
  • Kerrie – even if they were on the center line between the two sides of the drag shift, if they were following closer to that center line, that puts them on a much further distance than 50 feet.
  • Ron –the width of the drag strip of that track surface is 42 feet. The centerline of the track would be 21 feet, and the wall to the microphone is just short of 50 feet. It's like 48 and a half feet depending upon how you measure it. The distance that was set is within the parameters. This stuff was set before me.
  • Kerrie – Paul, do you remember that?
  • Paul – the setup of the meter predates my time. It's been up there in the same location. I do think there have been some modifications of some of the cabling, there were some cabling challenges, but I do not recall it being in a different location. I was not involved in moving the location, so it should be in the same location for quite a long time. The Kenton meter is a different situation, but the trackside meter has, for consistency’s sake, been in that same location for a long time.
  • Kerrie – would it be possible to come out and take a look at this to see where it is?
  • Paul – sure, it's a park, it's open. Come at any time. We've always encouraged people to come out and take a look at it. I will find out the exact date, but I think it was probably done in your time, Paul, because you've been, correct me if I’m wrong, the Noise Officer for about 20 years now.
  • Paul – 26 years. We are talking about the current location of the meter that is next to the west end of the bleachers. That has been up at that location since before I even started the city, because when I first came out, it was in that general location – it may have been slightly adjusted. There was a different, much more basic meter and when they put the other meter up, they used the same location because of the selection of the distance from the track. The track didn’t change.
  • Charles – Kerrie brought this up a couple of times before, and what I can assure you, after having done thousands of laps on that racetrack, is that the current location of the sound meter is where a road racing car is at its absolute loudest. You have just come out, turn 12. You are at full throttle at that point, you will not find a louder place for a road race car on the racetrack than where that meter is, so rest assured it is not favoring drag racing, if anything, it’s dis-favoring road racing.
  • Kerrie – that was not really my question. It was more of the distance to the vehicle from the microphone because we've been using 50 feet dimension as our reference distance.
  • Charles –in road racing, the location of that microphone, you will not find any quieter place on the entire race. You are splitting hairs, you're as close as you can possibly get to that microphone at the position on the racetrack. If you are not in that position on the racetrack, you are either exiting the track or you're in big trouble. You have done something very wrong and making noise is the least of your worries.
  • Kerrie – five feet off of that can have a significant impact.
  • Charles – I'm not sure what you're looking for here. In the road racing situation, when there is two cars, maybe they're side by side, so you can have them at different distances.
  • Jill – thisprobably merits a discussion outside of the remaining time in this meeting. Recommendations definitely need to continue to be forthcoming, whether that comes in phases and whether they are small or larger recommendations.

Item 4: Next Steps

• Subcommittee members will submit feedback on the draft Progress Report to Mary by Friday, March 3^rd.
• Jill – we have a scheduled presentation on resolution 34626 on our agenda for the next call. We did bring up the opportunity that the City is investing in a new tracking system for complaint logging, if it would be of interest to receive an update from 311. The trackside meter may merit a bit more discussion, whether at our agenda meeting or offsite if someone wants to perhaps visit the track between now and March.
• Mary – Marty and Kerrie were scheduled to give us a report at the March meeting, but Marty is not going to be there, so we will need to move that on the task list to the April meeting.
• Jill – one recommendation we could resurface would be some sort of update to the Greenbush study. Feel free to let us know of any other suggestions you may have.

Jill called for public comment – no comments.

Jill: adjourned the meeting

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