Noise upsets but family say they're victims

Are they neighbours from hell or simply the only family in the area with teenagers?
That's the question after Welcome Bay's Willis family received 35 noise complaints since their quiet cul-de-sac off Osprey Drive started filling up with houses.
From the luxury of being the only house at the bottom of Bateleur Close, Kim Willis says she has been reduced to feeling like a social outcast too nervous to even have a few friends around for drinks.
One thing is clear - some neighbours are on an increasingly short fuse, starting with the first complaint that resulted in police arriving at 11pm to seize a stereo from a pre-Christmas party. This was followed by the council issuing three excessive noise notices between mid-January and mid-February - at 9.40pm, 8.30pm and finally 5.30pm.
A final noise abatement notice warned that one more offence over the next six months and she would be fined $750.
The family joined 15 other householders around Tauranga on their final noise warnings.
Ms Willis said she responded by getting rid of her 13-year-old son's drum set but as complaints mounted from mid-January her 19-year-old son, Mike, unplugged his guitar from a big amplifier and started practising through headphones and a $100 miniature amp.
She traces her woes directly to the arrival of elderly residents in the street but the anonymous nature of the noise complaint service meant she was unsure who was responsible.
She applied to the council yesterday to have the noise abatement notice lifted four months early. The council has yet to make a decision.
The council's hearings committee was given a letter signed by five neighbours urging the council not to relent, saying that one resident who lived 150m along the road was so disturbed by the drumming that he sold and moved away.
Ms Willis rubbished this statement, saying her youngest son had been practising on his drums for only two weeks when the person left, and it took longer than that to sell a house.
The letter said that since the abatement notice took effect, guitar practices had lasted for short times of 10 to 15 minutes.
"We feel that this is sometimes to aggravate people and get a reaction. By the time noise control arrived, it would be quiet. We also know some people in the street feel scared and intimidated, and therefore have not made complaints.
"We don't bear any malice towards the residents of number 27, but we have paid a lot of money to live in these houses and we want a normal amount of peace and quiet."
Ms Willis responded that no one had ever complained to her directly. The time she did go around the neighbourhood urging people to ring her first with noise complaints, even if it was anonymously, no one had seemed overly concerned.
"We don't want to have hassles with neighbours but now even the new people don't want to talk to us. I feel intimidated - they are ganging up on us. I don't think it is fair at all."
Ms Willis wondered if a couple of cattle skulls outside her house has somehow scared Christian neighbours into thinking she was a devil worshipper and her son's preference for heavy metal music had somehow reinforced this.
Ms Willis explained that she was descended from American Indians and the walls of her home were adorned with Indian objects. The cattle skulls were there because she was unable to get the skulls of bison - sacred to the Cree tribe.
After the Christmas party and drumming complaints, she had gone out of her way to tone down music practices and now the family's remaining stereo was played with the volume well down and the front door closed.
The Bay of Plenty Times received a mixed response when it approached some neighbours yesterday. One appeared genuinely unaware of the issue, another claimed to know nothing about a noise problem and a third recalled that things had got pretty noisy with guitars and drums over Christmas-New Year, but had quietened since.
The 35 complaints relate to 17 occasions between December 1 and March 17, with no complaints logged on council records since the abatement order took effect. Of the 17 occasions, four were judged to be loud enough from the property boundary to warrant issuing excessive noise notices. Most were simply entered in the log book as "no noise" or that only one complaint was received. Noise control officers need to receive a second complaint to go to a property or for the original phonecaller to ring back an hour later.