Mérida, Yucatán — The city’s director of tourism and economic promotion has joined the chorus of those demanding that restaurants and bar turn down their music.
Carolina Cárdenas Sosa said soundproofing regulations will make it the law.
City officials last week held a meeting with the Chamber of Commerce, the restaurant association, the tourism business council, the Centro Histórico board and the hotel association to draft regulations that will be presented to the City Council on Thursday.
The noise conflict will be solved before the current administration ends, she said, while exhorting restaurant and bar owners to lower the music in the meantime. The present leadership will hand the city’s reins to the winners of the July 1 election on Sept. 1.
Admitting residents’ desperation, Cárdenas Sosa maintained that the regulation “is not a magic wand.”
She also said some progress has been made in the battle, with “several” bars already confining their music to indoor soundproofed rooms. Cárdenas Sosa did not say which bars or how many have done this.
The municipal official stressed that the new regulation will be “balanced” and won’t eliminate night spots in the Centro, but allow “healthy coexistence” between neighbors.
She also clarified that the two businesses that were closed last Saturday were cited for safety violations, not noise complaints.
“The issue of Civil Protection is delicate, so far we have not had any accidents but for that we have to see that the places have emergency exits, that there are no excesses of capacity; if a place is prepared for 300 there are not 800. Here everyone has to comply,” she explained.
She denied that the sanctions amount to the city’s retaliation against the bars’ owners.
Source: Reporteros Hoy
