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A much-anticipated revision to the Entertainment Ordinance was withdrawn at Wednesday night’s City Council meeting after Ward E Councilman Steve Fulop convinced the administration that numerous community groups’ concerns about noise were never fully addressed. Fulop noted a combination of the “reactive rather than proactive” enforcement policy, the limited number of decibel readers, and the difficulty of “hashing out the details later” that the administration was counting on as sufficient cause to postpone a vote.

Because there are no more meetings in December, tabling the ordinance pushes back the first reading until January, putting the city’s timetable off by about a month. But in light of the five-year process of drawing up these revisions, a month seemed an insignificant amount of time to wait for Fulop.

The city, expecting the revision to help Jersey City’s nightlife compete with neighboring Hoboken and New York City by permitting more live entertainment, was eager to see the ordinance get off the ground. Still, those active in the city’s nightlife said there were still numerous flaws in the plan.

At the start of the meeting the city denied Fulop’s request for the ordinance to be withdrawn, with Director of the Department of Housing, Economic Development and Commerce Carl Czaplicki convinced that the city could hash out whatever disagreements existed over the current version of the bill between the first and second readings. He also stressed that the city had made an effort to reach community groups, and fears over noise complaints were likely overblown.

“Ninety-eight percent of establishments are operating in very good standing,” Czaplicki said. “Whether this is passed or not, those establishments [who cause noise complaints] will still have those issues. But we’ll enforce that.”

Previously the city struggled with noise enforcement due to a lack of decibel readers. At the cost of $5,000 the city has purchased three of these readers, as well as the training and certification for their use that is needed for the readings to hold up in court.

In fact, Czaplicki said that the city had met with neighborhood associations and small businesses, something “not typical” on the part of the city, but added, “we need to promote small business interests in moving this forward as well.”

“I received eight different solutions over the past two days despite our five years of work. That’s kind of ridiculous,” he said.

Ultimately, however, Corporation Counsel Bill Matsikoudis acknowledged that changing the time when establishments could no longer have live performances was too substantial a change to make between introducing and adopting an ordinance. With the possibility of having to re-introduce the ordinance at an even later date, Fulop’s request seemed a reasonable alternative.

Photo by Steve Gold