One Love for all

One Love organisers want you to sing along to your favourite reggae tune and have a good time with your mates – 'but we'll our best to keep the noise level down,” says event director Pato Alvarez.

Last year, one of New Zealand's biggest reggae festivals received more than 100 noise complaints across the two-day event at Tauranga Domain.

This year, the message is simple: If surrounding residents have a reasonable noise complaint, they'll be listened to.

'We want to work alongside the community, the Police, and Tauranga City Council for this event,”says event director Pato Alvarez.

'We acknowledge that the music will be audible beyond the venue and for this reason the hours of operation are restricted from midday to 10.30pm on Saturday, February 4, and midday to 10pm on Sunday, February 5,” says Pato, 'as well as sound checks from 10am-11am on both days”.

'As part of the resource consent process a noise management plan has been submitted and approved. A robust monitoring process is also in place to monitor noise levels throughout the event. We want to comply with our resource consent 100 per cent.”

An hourly update of noise monitoring from both within the city and from the surrounding areas will be available on their Twitter page @one_love_nz or online at: onelovefestival.co.nz/livefeed/

Pato says TCC received 122 complaints in 2016. 'The majority of these complaints were in regards to noise levels. During the 2016 event strong easterly winds than expected occurred during Waitangi weekend, which resulted in noise traveling a greater distance than anticipated.”

This year, organisers have again engaged a professional security company for the event with increased roving patrols in surrounding streets. Police will also be in attendance at the event and surrounding streets to manage any public disorder issues and the liquor ban.

'We aim to be around for a long time as we love holding the event in our home town,” says Pato, and he says they are working closely with Police to educate the public about the CBD's liquor ban. Pato is happy with the response from locals so far. 'We've been in contact with the neighbours and have done a letter drop with information and contact details so we have personalised communication with them. 'We also very excited to host more than 15,000 out-of-towners this Waitangi weekend in the Bay of Plenty, especially Tauranga, Papamoa and the Mount. 'It feels so good to put an awesome event in our city, as we are locals, and it feels even better seeing all the local business benefitting from our event.”

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