The Sun has received many letters on Sonoma’s Measure V, all in favor of leaf blower restrictions. Anybody care to dissent?
Letter: No on Measure V
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The Community's Independent Voice
The Community's Independent Voice
The Sun has received many letters on Sonoma’s Measure V, all in favor of leaf blower restrictions. Anybody care to dissent?
As homeowners who do their own gutter cleaning and yard work, we need our leaf blower to do our chores. We do not blow things into other people’s yards or into the street. We have heard that the city will be hiring a leaf blower “police person” at an annual salary of $60,000 per year – not including benefits. As a native Sonoman, the changes that have taken place in this town over the last 30 years are distressing. We were once a quiet, rural type of place. We aren’t that place now. It’s too bad.
The main reason Sonoma isn’t the quiet place it once was is because gas-powered leaf blowers roar all day long six days a week. Before leaf blowers were commercialized and weaponized, Sonoma was a lot quieter.
Sonoma won’t be hiring a “leaf blower police person” — it already has a code enforcement officer who, after Measure V passes & unless he is stone deaf, won’t have any trouble finding and ticketing clowns with gas powered leaf blowers.
Sonoma was a much more quiet place before cars, noise from highway 12. Also we get to smell gas from car emissions everywhere so why not ban them? Leaf blowers usually don’t go on all day long like construction. What about the impact on the economy. I’m disabled and have to hire people to help me. Would you propose I rake my own yard and wind up in the ER?
It is hard to understand the desire to return to a “quiet, rural type of place” and how a place can be quiet with a gas powered leaf blower going. I moved here 15 years ago from San Francisco and was sort of surprised that leaf blowers blast 2 to 3 times per week on my short block, for extended periods of time. Most of the leaf blower use is by hired help and the home owners never come out side much. They mostly stay inside and watch TV all day. I wish the idea of a total ban on all leaf blowers would happen one day and that the idea would spread to the entire county and not just the city of Sonoma. I thought I was coming to a “quiet, rural type of place”, but with leaf blowers going there are many times it is not.
Are you kidding me? This is the most ridiculous measure I have ever read in my life. You cannot police for quiet. If so, what is next? Screaming kids at the park? Fine them or put duck tape over their mouths. My neighbor’s loud barking dog that never stops? Why don’t we just put it down? The crazy loud motorcycle that blasts down my street every week. Put that guy in jail! You people are just stupid and spending taxpayer money recklessly. Some people in this town need to get a life and donate their time to something more beneficial than a loud leaf blower. There is your dissent Sonoma Sun. Print it.
These comments came too late to be included in today’s paper, which went t press Tuesday night. But thanks for joining the conversation.
Donna Albini has her talking points all wrong, which makes we wonder who is supplying her information. There is no “leaf blower” policeman being hired. There is already a code enforcement officer in Sonoma and he will cite many different types of violations, not just gas-powered leaf blower use. There will be no additional expense to the city when Measure V passes.
To know the truth about leaf blowers, go to http://leafblowernoise.com/.