Quiet zones and landlord accountability might provide the clearest path to a lower city volume, East Lansing officials say.
City officials presented the council with several plans Tuesday in an effort to reduce noise violations. This fall, East Lansing police reported a 36-percent increase over a year earlier in the number of violations.
Officials have said a combination of awareness, weather conditions and fewer home football games have helped reduce problems.
"We still believe that there is more we can do,"East Lansing City Manager Ted Staton said. "The noise issue did not emerge in East Lansing in one year."
Suggestions at the meeting included creating a Responsible Landlord Council and quiet zones in the city, and distributing a community standards handbook for students and their parents. Another measure would reprimand residents who strayed from "acceptable behavior."
But community standards that hold participants directly accountable for their actions might not put the city on a more hushed path, said Kevin Glandon, director of community affairs for ASMSU, MSU's undergraduate student government.
"Community standards don't affect someone's wants," he said. "I don't have the feeling that it would be able to change the way people feel about the situation."
Glandon suggested that the city work on the Spartan Community Expectations initiative with ASMSU to educate freshmen upon entering MSU about what is unacceptable behavior in East Lansing.
Councilmember Bill Sharp said he hopes to let ASMSU try to alleviate the noise problems. But while he said the plans have merit, Sharp is unhappy with the concept of a Responsible Landlord Council.
"I'm troubled with the idea of holding landlords responsible for noisy parties," he said. "I don't think that's their responsibility."
But Councilmember Beverly Baten said she would prefer landlords police themselves "before it gets to the situation where we are sitting around a table talking about it.
City staff also have advised police to meet with violators the morning after hosting a party to talk about future sanctions and suggested a court-ordered community service be changed to require offenders to work with at-risk youth.
Baten said while some suggestions could be useful, none get to the root of the problem.
"The noise issue isn't my problem," she said. "It's what starts the whole thing. The underlying issue is bad behavior due to alcohol."
Recent actions the city has taken to decrease noise include sanctioning rental properties that are a constant source of noise complaints, allowing police to initiate enforcement action without a citizen complaint, increase fines for violations.
The suggestions will be forwarded to several campus and city organizations for review and discussion before Tuesday's council meeting.
