Final tally: Sonoma’s leaf blower ban wins by 19 votes
Posted on November 30, 2016 by Sonoma Valley Sun
The final results of the November 8 election released today by the County Registrar of Voters confirm the passage of Measure V with 50.2 percent of the vote.
The total of no votes was 2,956, a mere 19 votes behind.
The result reinstates a city ordinance banning gas-powered leaf blowers but allowing electric/battery blowers to be used only Mondays through Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The ordinance was suspended when opponents submitted a petition to the City to put the measure on the General Election ballot. The ‘no’ campaign captured 49.8 percent of the vote total.
12 thoughts on “Final tally: Sonoma’s leaf blower ban wins by 19 votes”
Comments are closed.
Very disappointing. Now Sonoma will be faced with the headache of enforcing the rule. Good luck with that!
So Larry Will rears his financially self-interested head out of the grass to hiss a snide sore-loser comment for a newspaper in little ol’ Sonoma. Like many in the vocal minority who cling to their bibles and leaf blowers, Larry Will doesn’t actually LIVE in Sonoma. Larry lives in ARKANSAS.
His comment doesn’t mention that he is a former Vice President of Engineering for Echo, Inc., a HUGE manufacturer of gas leafblowers. To get that information one has to visit his website at: http://leafblowernoise.com/
In retirement, he eeks out a living as a ‘consultant’ in the pay of leaf blower manufacturers, trying to prevent communities from banning gas leaf blowers that help line his pockets. In short, Larry is a corporate lobbyist — and a bad one at that — well-known to residents and environmentally-knowledgeable opponents of gas leaf blowers in other CA cities and similar groups in Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and elsewhere around the country who are increasingly banning leaf blowers.
A red-state Trumpist of the first order, Larry never met a fact or argument against leaf blowers he couldn’t ignore. On his website, he goes to great lengths trying to convince people that the roar of the gas powered leaf blowers they are hearing isn’t nearly as annoying as everyone knows damn well it is.
Typical is his sore-loser ‘good luck with enforcing the ban’ comment, which ignores the fact that In Sonoma, enforcement won’t be hard at all — Sonoma has a dedicated code enforcement officer who, like most humans (even the deaf and hearing impaired), has no problem hearing and locating an operating gas powered leaf blower.
Annoyed residents also have cellphone apps to record & date stamp the sound of the blower, with cameras to capture pictures of offenders and their houses or their ‘landscaping’ truck license plates.
But please don’t tell that to Larry or his handlers; as a struggling ex-vice-president trying to get by on a consultant’s fat income, plus a six-figure pension & social security, he needs the work.
BTW- if it matters, per the Echo website & Wikipedia, “the Echo brand of hand-held petrol powered tools including chainsaws, brushcutters, hedge trimmers and leaf blowers are manufactured in Yokosuka and Morioka (Japan), with other major plants in Shenzhen, China and Lake Zurich, Illinois.”
We should just tax the blank out of noisy machines. I don’t know.
I feel sorry for myself and other humans who don’t like being surrounded by noise makers.
Let’s say I go into Larry’s neighborhood and crank up noise for @ 100 hours a week.
He probably would wan’t to disappear me.
Larry, please stand next to a gas leaf blower at full throttle and breathe deeply. Repeat.
I read his form letter to the city council. One of his absurd arguments was: In some cultures making noise is not considered an imposition on others.
In never ceases to amaze me the way in which industries that do harm to health and environment practice self deception by distortion and fear based propoganda. Have we not evolved beyond the reptilian brain?
Money making is so loud.
Larry is a pathetic schill paid by ECHO. When will he and ECHO wake up and realize their cancer causing, deafening gas leaf blowers are not wanted in community after community. If they had any business acumen, they would realize the tide has turned and sustainability is in.
Will celebrate the day ECHO goes bankrupt because they couldn’t change with the times.
Congratulations to Sonoma for doing the right thing! I look forward to the day in the not so distant future when Gas Leaf Blowers will be outlawed in our municipality. There is movement everywhere you look. You don’t have to subject yourself to the noise and pollution these machines spew out every day. There are alternatives and the sooner the industry adapts them, the better it is for all of us.
Thank you Sonoma!
Yes, thanks to anyone or anything that will help rid our lives of insidious noise.
Just to hear a bird once in a while seems like a dream.
I wonder how much pollution noise or otherwise goes into this message I am sending.
A cellphone medium in the US.
To get this device to me and to have it operable probably ruins a lot.
The butterfly effect of being is something else.
How’s it feel to lose a big one, Larry? Go ahead and put a link to this article on your website!
All your schemes, letters, and agitation of the packs of mow-and-blow-for cash-under-the-table guys couldn’t buy you another 19 votes?
This is a big loss, and one you’ll have to ‘splain to Echo… Your product is evil, and you are despicable for encouraging its use with your lies. Prepare to lose again and again…
Larry Will and Echo, hope they bring a class action suit against you. You lie, deny and expose innocent people to massive amounts of carcinogens, deafening noise and destroy quality of life. The most heinous of your actions is you harm the very people that buy and use your equipment. Hope you are brought up on charges.