Event production in Belle Glade
where the permit unlocks the evening and the strike stops first

Section 18.7-11 closes all city parks from sunset to sunrise. The exceptions are lighted courts, softball diamonds and other facilities where scheduled, permitted or programmed nighttime activities are conducted. Beyond those, no person may be or remain in any part of a park between sunset and sunrise unless permitted pursuant to Chapter 17.5, the special event chapter.

That sentence changes what the permit is. In most of the cities on this site a permit sits on top of a park that is already open; in Belle Glade it is what makes an evening show on a park lawn lawful at all. Sunset-to-sunrise park hours are not unusual by themselves, and Deerfield Beach, Coral Gables and Boca Raton each describe their own versions. What is particular here is the cross-reference: the park chapter points straight at the event chapter as its only way out of the closure.

Section 17.5-1 defines a special event broadly. It covers any parade, fair, show, festival, carnival, rally, party, motorcade, run, street dance, bike-a-thon, race, walk, athletic event or other attended gathering open to the general public, held in whole or in part on publicly owned property or public right-of-way. It also covers a gathering held wholly on private property that nevertheless affects the ordinary and normal public use of public property or rights-of-way, and any activity on publicly owned or controlled property where merchandise or services are offered for sale or where the estimated size of the event will exceed fifty people. Events sponsored or co-sponsored by the city, public or private school events on school property, and funeral processions are excluded.

The threshold is fifty people. A small concert on a park lawn is inside it.

Section 17.5-3 puts the written application with the planning and building director thirty days before the first day of the event. A shorter lead time is possible only if it is requested and approved by the City Commission, so even the waiver is a commission item. The commission approves or denies every application, and the director issues the permit.

Section 17.5-4 binds the commission to consider every application uniformly and not to discriminate on political, religious, ethnic, race, disability, sexual orientation or gender grounds. A uniform standard is a planning advantage: the answer does not depend on who is asking.

Subsection 17.5-4(6) is the one that matters for a series. The length of the special event may not exceed seven calendar days in any calendar quarter. That is a quota on a festival series, not only on one event. A run of weekend concerts is counted against the same seven days as a single long festival, so the calendar is built backward from the quota.

Section 18-31 opens with a general prohibition on any unreasonably loud, excessive, unnecessary or unusual noise, followed by an enumeration that is expressly not exclusive. Two entries in it set the clock.

Subsection (1): operating any sound device between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. in such manner as to be plainly audible is prima facie evidence of a violation. Subsection (2): machinery, demolition equipment, construction equipment, excavating equipment, power tools and construction work are restricted between 9:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. the following day.

The machinery line comes two hours before the sound line. In most cities a show's load-out is the part with room in it; here, a strike that depends on a forklift, a lift or power tools has to be finished, or planned around, by nine. The music can run later than the equipment that built the stage.

The plainly audible test in subsection (1) states no measurement distance at all. That sets it apart from the tests on the Stuart, Fort Pierce and Vero Beach pages, which each attach fifty feet to the standard, and from Aventura, which uses a hundred. Boca Raton has a standard with no figure and no distance but also no hour; Belle Glade has the hour and no distance. Section 18-31 adds that even where the plainly audible standard is not met, the city may otherwise prove the noise was unreasonably loud. The test is where the listener is, and the code does not say how far away that is.

For machinery, Aventura also restricts it on a clock, but on weekends; Belle Glade's nine o'clock line applies every night.

The city's published special event permit application asks the applicant to declare whether sound equipment or a generator will be used. Read that next to the exemptions in section 18-32. Subsection (6) exempts generators only for testing in advance of, and running during, a power outage.

So a show generator carries no exemption at all. It is a sound device under section 18-31, and from 11:00 p.m. the plainly audible test applies to it the same as to the PA. The form puts the question on the record at application, and the noise article gives the answer afterward. A generator belongs on the plot with its distance, its enclosure and its shutdown time already decided.

Boynton Beach also gives generators a narrow exemption tied to outages, so the exemption being this tight is not exclusive to Belle Glade. The pairing with a form that asks about it up front is what is particular to Belle Glade.

Section 18-32 lists what the noise article does not reach:

• (2) sound generated by a government-sanctioned activity, on private or public land or in a right-of-way, expressly including parades and fireworks displays;
• (3) crowd noise at organized sporting events;
• (4) bona fide agricultural operations conforming to generally accepted agricultural and best management practices, a real exemption in a city ringed by cane;
• (6) generators, but only for testing in advance of and running during a power outage;
• (7) uses in the I-2 General Industrial District, but only where the City Commission specifically so determines at site plan review or later by resolution.

Nothing on the list is a permitted concert or festival. Whether a given event counts as a government-sanctioned activity is a question for the city, and the code does not say that a special event permit makes it one. The planning assumption is that the show is under section 18-31. Boynton Beach, the nearest Palm Beach County comparison on this site, publishes a decibel table alongside its exemptions; Belle Glade publishes none.

Section 17.5-6(2) lets the planning and building director prohibit or restrict the use or construction of platforms, chairs or other equipment if it would damage city property or constitute a hazard to public safety. For a staging company that is the most consequential sentence in the chapter. The permit does not guarantee the stage; the stage is a separate discretionary call by the director, so the staging plan, its footprint and its ground protection are part of the application conversation rather than something solved on load-in day.

The published application form adds the details the ordinance does not:

• a fire retardant certificate is required for each tent; Davie also asks for flame retardant documentation on tents;
• permits, licenses and insurance certificates may be supplied within ten days of the first day of the event rather than at application;
• the deposit is due within five days after receipt of notice from the city;
• additional city services are reimbursed within thirty days after the last day of the event;
• a site plan is required if the planning and building director requires one;
• a vendor name and license is required if food is sold or provided by a vendor, proof of license and permit for rides, and an alcohol license if alcohol is served.

The deposit, the city service reimbursement and the insurance limits are each a fee or limit the ordinance and form set, and the form is the place to read them.

Section 17.5-6(1) requires the public area to be cleaned immediately after the event and restored in all respects to its former condition within twenty-four hours, or within another period the commission sets when it reviews the application. Port St. Lucie writes the same twenty-four hours into its zoning code; the difference here is that the commission can set a different period on the application, so the period is a negotiation point at the commission, not only a deadline.

Combined with the nine o'clock machinery line, the load-out is bounded at both ends: the heavy work cannot run late into the night, and the ground has to be back within a day.

Section 18.7-22(d) caps vehicle speed in parks at fifteen miles an hour. Subsection (e) forbids driving a vehicle anywhere except established roads or parking areas, or an area the director has specifically designated as temporary parking for that occasion. A truck does not cross grass to a stage position unless the director has designated the route.

Section 18.7-18 bars advertising or offering any article, merchandise, food, drink or service for sale, and bars placing any stand, cart or vehicle for it, in a park unless permitted under Chapter 17.5. Section 18.7-12 bars displacing or removing structures, equipment, stakes, posts or boundary markers, and bars digging or removing soil. A staked tent and a ground-anchored truss base both need the permission first; Vero Beach attaches a ten-inch stake length to the same problem, and Belle Glade does not state one.

Despite its title, Chapter 18.5 applies only to tents and temporary structures erected for religious activities. It is the oldest event instrument in the code, and it is stricter than the general special event chapter. An established church is exempt in its own church building, but not if it uses a tent. The application goes in at least two weeks before the effective date, and the applicant must deliver a copy to the Belle Glade Ministerial Association, by hand or by certified mail, return receipt requested. The association may submit written comments to the city manager by the Thursday before the commission considers the application. A private association with a right of notice and comment on a tent permit is not something any other city page on this site describes.

Section 18.5-34 sets a sound rule: on oral or written demand of the police department the applicant must reduce loudspeaker or PA volume to a level that will not interfere with normal conversation anywhere within two hundred feet of the property line, with the officer's determination prima facie evidence. And there shall be no loudspeakers outside the tent or structure. Guy ropes must be clearly marked and tagged with streamers or flags (18.5-35). The permit is capped at sixty consecutive days, and no more than one permit may issue to the same applicant or any affiliated entity in any consecutive six-month period (18.5-37(b)).

This chapter is narrower than it looks. A concert or festival tent that is not a religious activity falls under Chapter 17.5, not here, but the two-hundred-foot conversation test is a useful picture of how this city thinks about PA volume at an edge.

The Dolly Hand Cultural Arts Center, on the Palm Beach State College Belle Glade campus, publishes a seating capacity of 467. Its Grand Hall is 3,000 square feet with a commercial catering kitchen and seats over 200 dinner guests. The public theater page describes state-of-the-art sound and lighting but publishes no stage dimensions, no proscenium width or height, no fly system or line set count, no grid height, no loading dock detail, no pit and no equipment inventory. The only published drawing is a seating chart. Technical planning for that building starts with a request to the venue, not a drawing.

Torry Island is described by the city as a 640-acre island on the southern shore of Lake Okeechobee. It carries the city's campground and marina with full-hookup sites, six-lane boat ramps with parking, covered pavilions along the Rim Canal, security gates, an activity building and an observation tower. The only road onto it crosses the Torry Island Swing Bridge, built in 1935, carrying County Road 717 and West Canal Street. It is one lane wide, with traffic lights on both sides controlling direction, and it is the only bridge in Florida still opened manually by crank. FDOT lists it in its Historic Highway Bridges of Florida inventory as the Belle Glade Swing Bridge, bridge number 930072.

Neither the city nor the county publishes a load posting for that bridge. There is no published figure to plan against. A Belle Glade lakefront load-in therefore begins by confirming the posting with Palm Beach County before a truck is routed, because the access is a single manually operated lane.

Venues are described here only by what their owners publish.