Since the construction of the Eastern Oregon Trade and Event Center, there has been a lot of discussion related to noise ordinances and enforcement of those ordinances. At the current time, the City of Hermiston ordinance only applies to areas inside the city limits and the Umatilla County ordinance does not apply to noise created within incorporated cities.

In order to address this issue in a comprehensive manner, the city staff did extensive research and had extensive discussions related to what changes to the ordinance, if any, might be made. The proposed ordinance is the result of all of that work and is based on the League of Oregon Cities Model Noise Ordinance with some modifications.

The current ordinance was adopted in 1990 with minor amendments in 1991 and 1998. This ordinance is almost 30 years old. During that time period the preferred approach to noise regulation shifted from an objective decibel standard to a "reasonable person" standard. This shift started about 10 to 15 years ago and has become the adopted approach of most of the cities in our population range. Following is a table that shows which jurisdictions are using what type of standard: