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“Those are two different types of calls,” said Gallant.

The change allows police to focus on their core duties, he said. “It’s a question of being able to focus on our own specific mandate and being able to respond when criminal activity is taking place.”

It’s unclear when the change will come into effect. But city councillors say they only learned about the change in a Thursday memo, and they have concerns about it.

Coun. Diane Deans, chair of the community and protective services committee, called the changes “problematic.” The police might be saving money, but it will have a domino effect, she said.

“A noise call can be the tip of an iceberg. It can escalate, if we don’t don’t have the opportunity to de-escalate, we’re saying, ‘Go wild!'” said Rideau-Vanier Coun. Mathieu Fleury. About 90 per cent of noise complaints happen in Fleury’s ward and Coun. Catherine McKenney’s Somerset ward.

Bylaws officers and police work well together and this new system puts them into silos, said Fleury. “It’s a team effort. If we create a silo, we eliminate all the police enforcement tools that bylaw can’t leverage.”

Anthony DiMonte, the city’s acting general manager of community and protective services, estimates that there will be 3,600 annual noise complaint calls that police won’t be answering under the new system.

Not responding to complaints won’t solve noise problems, he said. Bylaw’s first objective in defusing a noise situation is to go to the door and let the tenant or homeowner know about the complaint and to document it. A second or third complaint might result in charges. If bylaw officers investigate in the morning after a party, it’s hard to prove that there was a problem, especially if the complainant doesn’t want to step forward to be a witness.