Brook Haven neighbors complain of relentless soccer noise
In the neighborhood behind Brook Haven Middle School, soccer is not everyone’s favorite sport
For several years now, noise from the after-school and weekend soccer games at Brook Haven Middle School have resulted in a string of neighbor complaints, school board appeals, and calls to the police—and there’s no satisfactory resolution in sight.
Washington Avenue residents Jay and Shelli Goldin and a few other Brook Haven neighbors whose properties border the soccer field, say that the constant noise coming from after-school and weekend soccer games at Brook Haven have made their lives almost unbearable.
Goldin traces the problem to 2021, when a new all-season turf was installed at Brook Haven, and all but one of the nearby Ragle Ranch Regional Park soccer fields were closed due to unsafe and unplayable conditions. Since then, soccer games at Brook Haven have become a seven-day, all-day source of children’s “outdoor” voices, cheering parents, referee whistles and other noise.
Goldin got the police involved early on. He wrote to the Sebastopol Union School Board that “the Sebastopol Police Department has visited the field and our house, and dispatched Sgt. Thompson to measure the noise at our property from a Saturday soccer game on October 21, 2023.”
Noting that the legal noise limit in Sebastopol during daytime hours is 55 dB and 45 dB at night, Goldin said the officer recorded the following on his property:
Rear Fence/Property Line Left Center: 73.8 dB
Rear Fence/Property Line Left: 72.2 dB
Rear Deck: 72.1 dB (multiple readings)
Interior Rear Bedroom: 66.5 dB (multiple readings)
Goldin said that it’s even louder than this during a tournament game.
“It’s become almost constant every day and we’ve lost the enjoyment of our backyard and property,” said Goldin. “We’ve lived here 23 years and always knew schools can be loud sometimes. But it’s now become intolerable.”
Other Brook Haven neighbors have complained to school officials about the play field noise, parking and traffic problems.
Sebastopol police have responded to at least a dozen “noise complaints” at the Brook Haven fields, most of them from the Goldins. City and school officials claim the play field noises are exempt from local noise ordinances, and Sebastopol Police Chief Sean McDonagh concurs.
“Under principles of sovereign immunity, they [Sebastopol Union School District] are not subject to local control,”McDonagh said. “At present we have not received a volume of complaints from a variety of complainants that would indicate this is a widespread issue within the community.”
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Brook Haven School and Sebastopol Union School District (SUSD) officials have told Goldin and other neighbors they have reminded all after-school users to practice “good neighbor” rules about noise, limited hours and trespassing. The officials have refused to further reduce soccer games and other after-school uses so they can serve the larger community’s needs under a state-mandated Civic Center Act.
Following district voters’ approval of a $17.5 million school bond in 2020, SUSD trustees approved $6 million in outdoor campus improvements that included a new all-season artificial turf field for multi-sports, primarily soccer. (The new field cost $1.8 million.)
The Brook Haven School athletic fields are unlocked for after school and weekend use. These facilities include tennis and pickle ball courts, a baseball/softball diamond, and the all-season artificial turf field for soccer.
The fields are currently being used by the Sebastopol Little League T-ball teams, Kinderkickz pre-school soccer program and the larger Western Sonoma County Soccer League (WESCO). The fields are also open to the general public during non-school daylight hours. Weekend play hours are 9 am to 5 pm on Saturdays and 10 am to 4 pm on Sundays.
According to Goldin, the Brook Haven fields are almost always in use over all seven days.
Goldin claims the heavy use and constant noise has “taken value from my property,” citing a legal clause of “inverse condemnation,” which could be the basis of a legal or court complaint that Goldin says he is seriously considering.
“We have an attorney, and we are evaluating next steps,” he told the Sebastopol Times.
After years of formal appeals and complaints, Goldin and his wife, Shelli, are now temporarily moving out of their home in hopes a resolution can be found in the very near future.
“We’ve called the police about the noise levels that exceed city ordinances, and they have done nothing. We feel the school officials have ignored us and their lawyers have basically told us to ‘go away,’” Goldin said.
“All we want is a return to the status quo, when we had some quiet times and quiet weekends,” said Goldin, who works primarily from home and whose back deck sits about 50 feet from the school field boundary. The Goldins’ wooden fence has been repeatedly damaged by kicked soccer balls. School maintenance workers repaired them again just last week.
Neighbors come to a SUSD board meeting
Goldin has been a regular visitor at SUSD board meetings, where he rises to speak during public comment about the noise problem. In October 2025, the noise issue was on the board’s official agenda. Goldin gave a presentation and several other neighbors turned out to ask for relief.
“I wear noise canceling headphones, and I turn the volume up on them to the loudest setting listening to my music, and I still hear the cheering so loud inside my house with all the windows closed,” said neighbor Cara Baum.
She also said that noise isn’t the only problem. “Our back fence has been terrorized,” she said. “The kids kick in the fence, peel back the boards and crawl through to get into our yard without permission.”
“These are my ear plugs that I have to wear in my home,” said Shelli Goldin, almost sobbing in frustration. “It’s so loud.”
Another neighbor told the school board at the same meeting that they no longer host outdoor barbecues or gatherings in their yard. “Why do we have to have that many games in our backyard? I don’t understand,” the neighbor said.
A third neighbor at the meeting said he was a former soccer coach and parent and supported youth soccer in Sebastopol. But he added, “It’s exhausting, 7 am to 8 pm, cheering non-stop, whistles, non-stop, our animals pacing the house non-stop. I love soccer but why do we have to have so many games in our backyard?”
Nothing seems to have changed in the intervening months, and things are getting tense. On April 4 of this year, at 1:19 pm, the police got a report that one of the neighbors bordering the Brook Haven soccer field was repeatedly blowing an airhorn to interrupt the game. Soccer officials called the police.
Goldin said he was driving back from San Francisco at the time of this particular incident, but said he regularly blows an airhorn “at sunset, when people should be leaving the field. That has frustrated some people on the field,” he said. He also said that just after airhorn incident on the afternoon of April 4, a car sped down and burned rubber on their street, and he wondered if that was done as retaliation and as a form of intimidation.
He also wondered why his complaints about soccer noise never show up in the police logs in the Sebastopol Times. (Our answer: If we see them, we’d print them.)
The search for more places to play
This year, WESCO has 1,300 youth soccer players enrolled in various age group teams and leagues. WESCO uses fields at Analy, El Molino, Twin Hills, Apple Blossom and Salmon Creek schools and the one open field at Ragle Ranch Park. (Six fields at Ragle remain closed and are in need of longterm repair.)
“We appreciate all the schools for the use of the fields,” said WESCO parent and treasurer Steve Yob. “Brook Haven has been amazing for keeping the fields open for the community use. We’ve worked with our coaches and visiting teams about excessive noise and obeying other rules.” WESCO has added signage about prohibiting dogs, noisemakers and excessive noises at Brook Haven. SUSD has provided WESCO with special low volume whistles for game officials, Yob added.
WESCO leaders and donors continue to raise funds for the Sonoma County Parks Foundation to support field maintenance at the county-owned Ragle Ranch Regional Park, located a half mile from Brook Haven. Since the park opened over 40 years ago, the playing fields have been plagued with gophers and poor drainage during winters and wet seasons.
WESCO and the City of Sebastopol are currently looking for additional locations for temporary and practice soccer fields. Two weeks ago, the city council heard a report about adding fields near the Youth Annex at the Sebastopol Community Center and on the vacant lot of a future hotel site adjacent to the town plaza. The council gave a thumbs down to the Youth Annex location for environmental reasons (mostly light pollution) but voted to explore a temporary field in the empty lot downtown.
“We all recognize we have limited recreational facilities in our community,” said SUSD board president Deborah Drehmel. “Our board has made a priority to serve the needs of our larger community. We have an open campus, and that is our gift back to the community.”
In California, public schools are mandated by state law to allow public use of their facilities when not in use by students or district programs. (The California Civic Center Act is part of the Education Code, Section 38130-38139.)
In a letter to the SUSD board, Golden countered that “California Education Code Section 17529(b) prohibits a school district from renting or leasing facilities to other parties if such usage would ‘unduly disrupt the residents in the surrounding neighborhood.’”
“The Brook Haven field has always been a busy, heavily used field until the field deteriorated over time with gophers and safety became an issue,” SUSD Superintendent Sara Gram told the Sebastopol Times. After many years of temporary repairs, Gramm said the district used bond funds during the COVID 19 pandemic “to refurbish the field to an artificial turf. Overall, there was no change to the intent of the field use.”
Goldin and neighbor Thomas Lindberg protested at the time, testifying that the school district did not provide neighbors with an adequate warning about the construction at the fields. School officials have repeatedly denied this infraction of required public noticing.
“The neighborhood folks do not want this excellent upgraded facility taken away from the Brook Haven students and the community, but it is also clear that mitigation measures are needed to address the sports park impact,” wrote Lindberg in 2022.
Responding to the neighbors’ complaints, Gramm acknowledged the challenge of sharing a compact community space. “It is a challenge to balance the needs of the broader community, the wellness of our youth and the expectations of our neighboring residents,” Gramm said.
Sebastopol City Council member Phill Carter is also an officer with the WESCO soccer league. He declined to address the specific issues surrounding the Brook Haven fields due to his overlapping role in the ongoing discussions.
“But I will go on the record to say Sebastopol needs more playing fields. We need to build new fields,” he said, “and we need more support to get this done.”
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Looking at how the fence bordering the soccer field was destroyed by balls and kids reminded me of research I did years ago on noise reduction, as my property is bordered by a well-traveled road. There are methods available that the city or school should pay for since it is their noise that degrades neighboring property. It's not cheap but not exorbitant either. Check these sites to see what I am referring to.
https://www.thespruce.com/what-makes-a-good-noise-barrier-fence-2130907
https://outdoorfixes.com/how-to-soundproof-a-fence/
I am appalled by this story. Three things stand out. The 1.8 million dollars spent on a soccer field!!? Really, when budgets are so tight? Six fields lying fallow at Ragle? And the soccer organization turning a blind eye while enjoying the revenue provided by these public assets. Three institutional failures combined to create this miserable situation for the neighbors who pay the taxes and otherwise support these organizations. Common sense and courtesy require that these three institutions get together and solve it. Or it will end up in court. Finding/raising enough money to fix a few of the Ragle fields seems like a better solution and sets a better example for the kids.