By VICKI URBANIK

All-terrain vehicle tracks have popped up in a few places in unincorporated Porter County, and neighboring residents upset with the constant noise have found a sympathetic ally in the county commissioners.

The Porter County Commissioners agreed Tuesday to get a plan in place for dealing with the ATV sites at their next meeting, with the goal of making sure that the tracks don’t cause problems for the neighbors.

County Commissioner President Robert Harper told County Sheriff Dave Lain that the commissioners have received many complaints about the tracks from neighboring residents. “Poor people are suffering, especially this summer,” he said.

The commissioners said three sites in particular have generated the most complaints: In Liberty Township, near Ind. 49 and the silo south of U.S. 6; a site near Washington Township Schools; and a site in Porter Township, near C.R. 200S and 200W.

South County Commissioner Carole Knoblock, who lives near the Porter Township site, said a county officer came out to the track recently at the height of the noise. “It was bad,” she said.

Exactly what the county can do remains to be seen.

County Attonrey Gwenn Rinkenberger said officials have been dealing with assorted complaints about noise for a number of years. At one point, the county attempted to get a noise ordinance on the books, but enforcement was seen as too expensive and time consuming, she said, noting that the county would have had to buy decibel-reading devices and train officers on their use.

So, Rinkenberger said she reviewed state law and found that the law gives local law enforcement the authority to charge people with an infraction based on whether something is unreasonable or not.

She urged the sheriff’s police to visit the ATV tracks to determine for themselves if the noise is reasonable.

Lain raised a concern, however, that the county needs to define what’s reasonable, since something may seem offensive but police still don’t have the authority to issue a citation. He said he personally knows how disruptive ATV tracks can be, but questioned whether the county wants to start ticketing 10-year-olds riding their ATVs and what grounds the police would have to do so.

But Harper said the sites in question don’t just involve a few kids, but are those that attract large groups of people. Any citation would likely be issued not to a child but to the adult property owner, he said. And as for determining what’s unreasonable, he said that officers can make an arrest for other offenses, such as public intoxication, based only on a subjective call by the officer.

Rinkenberger described the issue in a different way. Whether the noise level at an ATV track is reasonable nor not is like pornography, she said. “You know it when you see it.”

She said the county has long had the ability to issue citations in noisy situations based on the reasonable standard contained in state law, but “everyone just keeps fighting it.”

North County Commissioner John Evans noted that Porter County now has a new sheriff in Lain and a new prosecutor in Brian Gensel. He stressed that it will be important to get “everyone on the same page” in terms of taking action, since it would make no sense for the sheriff’s department to issue citations if the prosecutor’s office won’t prosecute. Then, the cycle continues, he said, with people taking their complaints to the county commissioners, who then don’t have a way to solve the problem.

Posted 6/20/2007