"Lovick believes the county's sound ordinance is difficult to interpret. On one hand, anything that disturbs someone can be considered a nuisance; and on the other, it sets the residential noise level at 55."
Does anyone actually have a problem understanding this? Disturbing someone is a nuisance, if you're at 55 or over you are presumed to be disturbing someone.
"You have said 'just turn it down,' but I want to worship in the way I want to worship and I don't want someone else to tell me how I can do it."
I hate to think of church members whose ethos reject the notion of harming others as being a bad thing... One thing to self harm, but loud noises causes hearing loss and lots of bass causes things to shake, well, damaging everything.
We weren't here first, we are doing something new, but by golly, how dare you take offense at our blatant disturbing of the public peace and your right to quiet enjoyment.
If it were me, I'd file a tort, and failing that, set up my own boom box set to 54 dB
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-NOZU2iPA8And a handy chart. 55Db is the point in which you've got to start raising your own voice to be heard.
http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/Noise/My phone has an app that tells me how loud things are too
And one more edit as I'm still killing time for dinner... the local ordinance
http://www.co.snohomish.wa.us/Documents/Departments/Council/county_code/CountyCodeTitle10.pdfIt is really straight forward, there is even a chart. An amusing bit of small print, ice cream trucks are exempted from much of it :)