PORTSMOUTH — When a Salvation Army bell ringer arrived in Market Square Tuesday morning, set up a donation kettle and began ringing for donations, Sarah Hamilton-Parker called the police.

PORTSMOUTH — When a Salvation Army bell ringer arrived in Market Square Tuesday morning, set up a donation kettle and began ringing for donations, Sarah Hamilton-Parker called the police.



“I listen to this for 200 hours a year,” said Hamilton-Parker, who works in a downtown shop near the annual bell ringers. “This is my fourth year and I can't take it anymore. I'm so sick of it.”



She said the bell ringing starts in the morning, clangs all day long, then continues into the night. According to her calculations, she listens to 40 hours of Salvation Army bell ringing every week, for five weeks a year, or 200 hours a year.



“I don't get a break,” she said. “It makes my blood pressure go sky high.”



Hamilton-Parker said she's complained to the Salvation Army every year for the past four years and asked that the bell ringers be moved across the street to the front of the North Church. But nothing has changed, she said.



She's also researched the city's noise ordinance which bans excessive noise and said she thinks the fund-raising bell ringers qualify as noise under that definition. But Police Capt. Mike Schwartz said the noise ordinance “doesn't apply” because city officials grant permission for the bell ringers to shake their bells in that location on an seasonal basis.



“I recognize her concern, but it's something the city has given permission for,” he said. “They don't even let me pick out my own clothes, so I don't have a say in it. But you do have a voice in city government. These are not back-room decisions.”



Hamilton-Parker said she's tried to convince the Salvation Army that its bell ringers would be better located in front of a coffee shop, for example, where people do cash business, instead of in front of downtown jewelry stores where people typically make credit card purchases.



“I've looked for every reason to make it go away,” she said. “I've got two sets of earplugs - one for me and one for my employee. I have my earplugs on for five weeks. It's just ridiculous.”



Hamilton-Parker said she also discovered, through trial and error, that playing autoharp music inside her store best masks the ringing bells because the music is “bell-like.”



“It makes me hate Christmas,” she said.



The downtown store clerk said if she can't get the bell ringers to move across the street, or to ring their bells at rotating locations in the downtown area, she'll write a letter of complaint to city officials.



She's also toyed with the idea of drafting a petition and bringing it around to other downtown businesspeople.



“I don't think it's an unreasonable request that they move across the street, or move around,” she said. “I'm a reasonable person. I just don't think it's fair.”



According to the Salvation Army's national headquarters, the “kettle campaigns” are run locally.



Late Tuesday afternoon, Pat James, from the Salvation Army's Northern New England Division in Portland, Maine, said she'd look into the local complaint and try to find a solution. James said if the Market Square location is a good one for raising money, the ringers may be given a “dead” non-ringing bell.



“The kettle effort is such an important program to help us help other people,” she said. “The money raised is critical for our services.”



The Salvation Army is a Christian-based charitable organization and its first known fundraiser using a kettle to collect cash was in 1891.