FAIRHOPE, Ala. - Just as the City Council was poised Monday night to delay consideration of an oft-changed ordinance that would have revised the noise ordinance once again, Councilman Rick Kingrea spoke up, and loudly.

“Are we nuts?” he said, to much laughter in an audience strongly and loudly in favor of keeping the ordinance that was enacted in January as is.

“We’ve been doing this for two and a half years,” Kingrea said. “We can study something to death. Let us have enough gumption to vote on it.”

The council did vote, although it had trouble obtaining a second to a motion to pass the ordinance, which would have lowered the maximum decibel level and was introduced by Councilman Dan Stankoski. By local rules, the council president cannot second a motion, so Mixon had to briefly pass the chairman’s gavel to Stankoski in order to make the second for a vote to occur.

Both Stankoski and Mixon voted to reduce the maximum decibel level from 85 to 65 decibels between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., with Kingrea, Ford and Quinn voting against the change.

Kingrea’s comments followed numerous residents, including local business owner Pete Blohme of Panini Pete’s, who took the microphone and spoke against making any changes in an ordinance that has divided some residents and business owners in the community during the past couple years.

Two residents, including Jim Horner of Volanta Avenue, who has been one of the most vocal citizens seeking a lower noise ordinance, spoke in favor of reducing the noise level. The object of his complaints, which have been filed with police and in efforts to change the law, has been Fly Creek Cafe, located near his house.

That waterfront business features live music some nights and days, and Horner and a few other Volanta Avenue residents have been persistent advocates for a lower decibel ordinance.

In an unusual move Monday, Fly Creek Cafe owner Tricia Niemeyer brought a small band of musicians with her, who played briefly from the back of the room.

“I’m not going to talk about noise, I’m going to make some noise,” she said before the group played. “It is loud.”

Things got personal between her and Stankoski at a couple points during the proceedings, when she began to accuse him of having a conflict of interest in his position, before being stopped by Mixon, which Stankoski later denied.

Niemeyer could not be reached for comment by press time regarding the result of the vote, or the purpose of having the small band appear.

The impromptu performance did create a small sensation and much laughter among those opposing the proposed revision in the law and strained looks on the faces of those seeking a change.

In other business, the council:

• Adopted a resolution over one council member’s objection, which stated that all procedures taken by city staff and officials regarding the award of a controversial $639,000 contract last summer for oil spill response efforts to local state Sen. Lee “Trip” Pittman were done properly and legally. Mixon said the resolution was needed to counter accusations and innuendo of illegality and unethical conduct made repeatedly against some city officials and staff by several residents.

Kingrea, while stating he believed local staff acted correctly, objected to the resolution, saying, “It’s like an acknowledgment that they may have done something wrong.” He said he was “very concerned” about some of the documents involved in the contract award, which became evidence submitted in an ethics complaint against Pittman, later dropped by the Alabama Ethics Commission on grounds not related to the merits of the case. The complainant in that case said an attorney with a state agency has filed an ethics complaint against Pittman based on evidence he provided, including those documents. That attorney would neither confirm nor deny whether a complaint had been filed by his office but intimated that under some circumstances an employee such as he would be obligated to file such a complaint if sufficient evidence were presented. “I’m not willing to preempt our ability to go back and do something,” Kingrea said about the contract award.

Kingrea voted against the measure, and Stankosi abstained, he said, because he was not present and did not vote when the contract was awarded in June 2010. Mixon, and council members Mike Ford and Debbie Quinn voted in favor of the resolution.

“The Fairhope City Council passed a resolution last night declaring that the BP Oil Boom Grant was administered correctly,” Chris Warner responded in an email Tuesday. Warner was a candidate for mayor in 2008 and one of those residents Mixon presumably had in mind, who has made repeated charges that city staff and officials broke the law and were unethical in the award of the oil spill response contract.

“The resolution is nonbinding and will do nothing to stop the truth from being made fully known,” Warner wrote.

Editor’s note: For additional coverage of the April 25 council meeting, see www.baldwincountynow.com and the April 29 edition of The Fairhope Courier.