BENNINGTON — After receiving a high volume of noise complaints from residents, the town of Bennington is pursuing legal action against Zichron Chaim Inc. and Moshe Perlstein, the operator of a summer camp taking place on Southern Vermont College’s former campus.
On July 15, Perlstein was served a temporary restraining order prohibiting noise on the campus after 9 p.m., but Bennington police reported multiple complaints about excessive noise the same night and the following day.
“I just received another 30 pages(!) of noise complaints from yesterday,” Merrill Bent, an attorney representing the town, wrote to Perlstein’s attorney in an email on the morning of July 17. “Some, but not all, are for loudspeaker noise after 9:00 p.m.”
Bent, an attorney with Woolmington, Campbell, Bent & Stasny, wrote that the town had no choice but to hold Perlstein in contempt for violating the order. Bent requested a contempt order hearing on Thursday in addition to a hearing on a preliminary injunction that has been scheduled for July 30.
“Can you tell me anything that might help us understand what is going on here?” she wrote. “The Town is at a total loss.”
Bennington resident Mark Nesbit’s property shares a boundary with the former college campus. He can see the camp’s large white tent from his back porch, and he says the noise has become unbearable.
“In the time we’ve been here, when the school was here, we’d never had a problem with noise,” he said.
Nesbit said he saw 15 buses file up the road to the college, and immediately called local officials. Since then, Bennington Police Chief Paul Doucette has worked directly with Perlstein in an attempt to communicate residents’ concerns about the noise.
While Perlstein has expressed a desire to communicate openly with residents and officials from the town and state, town officials and residents say the noise, which mainly consists of late-night music and a camp leader’s voice amplified by a megaphone, can still be heard across town.
“It’s a big campus, we don’t know where the noise is coming from. Please give me a call, and we will shut it down right there.” Perlstein said. “I’m on the phone every day with people in the community.”
Perlstein referenced the police records of the noise complaints, some of which conclude that officers did not hear noise upon responding to the complaint, or that the noise was not loud enough to violate the town’s ordinance.
Bent said the sheer volume of the complaints — 14 in total — show that there’s a problem.
“It’d be one thing if it was one neighbor who had a grudge,” she said. “It’s been 14 different police contacts since the order was issued.”
While most complaints are called in from the neighborhood that abuts the campus, Bennington selectboard president Donald Campbell said some residents claim to hear the camp from Main Street, about a mile down the road.
The campus’ position, atop a hill overlooking Bennington, may contribute to the volume’s intensity.
“There were many people who found the noise to be objectionable across town,” Campbell said. “That gives you a sense of how much the noise carries from that location. It’s really like being at the apex of the amphitheater up there.”
Perlstein and the camp have been at the center of discussions in Southern Vermont over the last several weeks as residents watched charter buses file onto both the Southern Vermont College campus in Bennington and to the town of Rutland’s Holiday Inn.
Communities were initially concerned about the spread of Covid-19 when the groups, which are each comprised of around 350 teens from the New Jersey and New York area, arrived.
Despite some hiccups at the outset, the camp has carved paths forward to meet Gov. Phil Scott’s emergency order, notwithstanding resistance from residents.
Now, Campbell said, Covid-19 has taken a backseat to the new concerns.
“There are still people that care about that,” he said, “but it’s been somewhat eclipsed by the noise concerns, which are so much more immediate.”
In a letter to the editor, written on behalf of the Greater Bennington Interfaith Council, published by the Bennington Banner last week, Nancy J. Thompson suggests that some of the reluctance about the camp may come from prejudice about the camp’s Orthodox faith.
“Unfortunately, we have learned that misinformation is circulating about the group,” Thompson wrote. “That misinformation is antisemitic and harmful. The Council welcomes Zikrom Chaim in friendship and urges all of Bennington to do the same.”
Bent said she believes the residents’ complaints simply relate to the camp’s disruption.
“I don’t think anything is underlying the complaints other than, ‘why can’t you turn off the loudspeaker after nine o’clock?’ There’s no reason for it,” she said. “It’s very simple. It’s a very simple resolution.”
