San Luis Obispo city council approved a program that will give residents 20 minutes to quiet their event down before the police issue a citation.
The program, titled “Pilot Party Registration program,” allows hosts of parties to register their address up to a week in advance with the San Luis Obispo Police Department (SLOPD). The program is voluntary.
The application requires the following information, and can be found here.
- Full name
- Date of birth (must be 18 years or older)
- Telephone number
- Street address
- Date of party (Friday, Saturday or Sunday)
“The goal is to have quieter neighborhoods in San Luis Obispo,” neighborhood outreach manager Christine Wallace said.
Currently, if a neighbor calls in a noise complaint, the police send a person out to issue a disturbance advisory card. If one hour passes and another call is made regarding that same house, police issue a citation or first-time fine of $350. The second citation costs $700 and the third and subsequent citations cost $1,000.
With this program, a dispatcher will call the registered tenant with a warning and attendees will then have 20 minutes to quiet down before the house is issued a citation.
Mayor Heidi Harmon said the program puts her election platform into action. Harmon ran on the notion of creating less ordinances and building relationships between students and the community.
“There’s a tendency to crack down on students, and we’re trying to create ways that students are going to want to have parties while also trying to make the living experience as pleasant as possible,” Wallace said.
City council adopted the program to not only to create quieter neighborhoods, but also to allow police to address the violent crime in the city, according to Wallace.
Since San Luis Obispo has seen an uptick in property and car theft, police can spend more time responding to those calls, as opposed to noise complaints.
This way, “we can manage noise complaints through warning phone calls that offer patrol folks to not have to respond to [noise complaints],” Wallace said.
SLOPD officially began accepting applications April 24.