DEERFIELD — The town’s zoning bylaw is clear: a special permit is required for any use that creates noise perceptible more than 200 feet from the property line.

What is unclear, though, is what meets the standard of “objectionable conditions” as laid out in Section 3710.

That benchmark in the town’s zoning bylaws, which do not spell out a decibel limit, is the question the Zoning Board of Appeals will have to determine as it considers two special permit applications — one to construct the building and one to exempt it from the noise ordinance — from the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office Regional Dog Shelter. The shelter seeks to construct a roughly 7,000-square-foot building on a vacant lot off of Plain Road East, as it has outgrown its existing space on Sandy Lane in Turners Falls.

At Monday evening’s meeting, attorney John McLaughlin argued that while “objectionable is an unusual term,” it can be “brought into science” by using the dictionary definition of the term, which can be defined as “provoking or likely to provoke protest.”

“My clients are imploring this board to use science and data,” said McLaughlin, representing several Plain Road East and Mill Village Road residents. “We shouldn’t be doing such an important decision for this neighborhood based upon somebody with a phone app.”

As the public hearing process for the dog shelter rolls on into another month, the ZBA again continued the matter to its July 17 meeting, as the Friends of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office Regional Dog Shelter committed at the end of Monday’s meeting to conducting a sound study of the parcel, even as the applicant and some members of the ZBA expressed confusion about what a sound study would show when there is currently no building on the lot.

“Even if we have the science there, we’re going to be arguing about where the science fits in with the qualitative wording,” said attorney Sam Prickett, who is representing the Friends group. “At a certain point, a decision has to be made about what is reasonably objectionable to members of the community.”

ZBA member David Sharp added “we all know what a barking dog sounds like” and this use in an industrial zone — the site also abuts Interstate 91 — would not be nearly as loud as any other industrial use.

“I’m really at a loss as to what the purpose is of a sound study. … We’re not putting in a manufacturing plant that makes an enormous, crashing, metal-on-metal noise rhythmically for a few hours a day,” Sharp commented.

Leslee Colucci, who has been director of the dog shelter for more than 13 years, noted the organization has never received a noise complaint at its current location. She added only a handful of dogs — supervised by staff or volunteers — would be outside at any given time, and if there was ever a barking issue, they could quickly be taken inside.

Following several comments from abutters about noise and privacy concerns, McLaughlin again urged the board to require testing.

“What we heard tonight should put a lot of things into the board’s mind. I do think some testing would be a viable thing,” McLaughlin said. “An expert can give you the amount of DBs [decibels] and then can tell us things about that amount of DBs.”

After a 10-minute recess requested by Prickett to allow him to confer with the applicants, he announced the Friends would be willing to try to conduct a sound study ahead of the July 17 meeting.

All documents related to the project, including the application, site plan and letters from attorneys, can be found at bit.ly/3ZTGeuH.

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com.