Here’s the article from today’s Bulletin by my colleague Hillary Borrud, with the judge’s reasoning and comments from Horned Hand owner Wesley Ladd as well as a couple neighbors who’ve called police to complain about the Colorado Avenue music venue in recent months.
Bulletin E-Edition:
It’s nice to see that Judge Hemphill sees what I see in the newest Bend noise ordinance…an unenforceable mess that falls apart under legal scrutiny. The question is why the city had to waste all of our time waiting for this type of ruling when so many regular citizens like myself (and plenty of city employees and police officers) knew that this wouldn’t hold up in court after reading the ordinance. I hope the city council members that helped pass this earlier this year are embarrassed about this and understand that there’s a lesson to be learned here about making sure you write an ordinance the right way the first time…but that seems unlikely given their history of hair-brained ideas and tripping over themselves.