{"id":158,"date":"2006-12-05T04:32:34","date_gmt":"2006-12-05T10:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/2006\/12\/04\/158\/"},"modified":"2006-12-05T04:53:49","modified_gmt":"2006-12-05T10:53:49","slug":"158","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=158","title":{"rendered":"Which Is The Bigger Crime?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That church bells <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/11\/30\/AR2006113001419_pf.html\">disturb the daytime slumber<\/a> of another somnolent suburb&#8230;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Fairfax County officials have issued a ringing non-endorsement of the bells at St. John Neumann&#8217;s in Reston, ruling that they must toll within the limits of the county&#8217;s noise ordinance or not at all.<\/p>\n<p>The Board of Supervisors asked the zoning staff this year to see whether the law could be amended to accommodate the church, whose bells ring at a volume slightly higher than the 55-decibel maximum permitted in residential areas&#8230; at an average of 75 decibels (roughly equivalent to a vacuum cleaner at close range), which is considerably above the 55-decibel limit in residential areas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;that the &#8216;burb&#8217;s government is backing and filling to justify it&#8230;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>James P. Zook, director of Fairfax&#8217;s Department of Planning and Zoning, recently told the board in a memo that&#8230;&#8221;Localities cannot enact different standards for noise emanating from a place of worship,&#8221; Zook said. If Fairfax did that, he said, the new rules would have to apply to &#8220;all other types of bells, chimes or carillons.&#8221; Zook noted, however, that at least two other cities, Morgantown, W.Va., and Seattle, did make exceptions for church bells.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;or&#8230;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>St. John&#8217;s, a Catholic church in south Reston, installed a $50,000 electronic bell system in 2004 as part of a major expansion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;that the scourge of electronic &#8220;bells&#8221; continues unabated?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That church bells disturb the daytime slumber of another somnolent suburb&#8230;: Fairfax County officials have issued a ringing non-endorsement of the bells at St. John Neumann&#8217;s in Reston, ruling that they must toll within the limits of the county&#8217;s noise ordinance or not at all. The Board of Supervisors asked the zoning staff this year [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}