Recommendation to request the Board of Health and Human Services to produce a detailed report within six months on any past discussions, memorandums, codes, ordinances, and/or regulations on leaf blowers. The Board should also provide input on any studies or documented health and safety impacts that have been identified by researchers on this topic. Equally relevant to developing a response strategy is any data available on complaints and potential impacts regarding this issue. Finally, the report should include recommendations that City Council could consider taking on this matter as a next step.
Great. Thank you. And moving on to item number five, make a brief. Comment. I didn't ask for it. Yeah, we did. Public comment? Yes. Yes. No public comment on that. But we did public comment. Item number five, please. Communication from Councilman Price, Vice Mayor Lowenthal, Council Superman and Councilman Andrew's recommendation to request the Board of Health and Human Services to produce a detailed report within six months on leaf blowers. Cameron. This over to Councilwoman Pryce. This item comes after a very lengthy discussions and robust discussions with residents in the third District regarding leaf blowers and the potential negative impacts that they have on the environment, including noise and air quality. What we did was we started to get a lot of concerns from residents letters to our office regarding this issue. So Belmont Heights resident and I actually wrote a letter in the grunion and asked the community what they thought about leaf blowers and whether they thought we needed to have some regulations on leaf blowers in general, but also maybe modifying our leaf blower, having a leaf blower policy that allows for certain types of leaf blowers so that we could minimize the detrimental impacts to the environment. So John Cisco from the Belmont Heights Community Association was the resident who coauthored the article with me. And as a result of the article, we received numerous letters and correspondence directly to our office, but also in the local paper regarding the issue. Many people are supportive of either banning them entirely or thinking about an alternative that allows leaf blowers to be used but has battery operated, not gas powered leaf blowers that could be quieter and less detrimental to the environment. So we wanted to have our. Board of Health and Human Services. Take a look at this issue and analyze the impacts and the possible options that would be available to the city of Long Beach. Looking at what some of the other cities have done, several cities have actually banned them entirely. Others have allowed for modified the use of certain leaf blowers, modified leaf blowers to be used. And we want the board to come back with an analysis for council and give us some recommendations and options in terms of what we could do to better the noise and health impacts of leaf blowers in our community. So I'd ask my colleagues to support this. Again, we're not voting tonight to ban leaf blowers. We're just asking the board to evaluate the impacts of leaf blowers and make recommendations to council in regards to what some options might be for us. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Orengo, I'm sorry, I my apologies. My summary. LOWENTHAL Thank you. That's quite all right. I wanted to thank Councilwoman Price for including me on this item. And as she alluded, this is not something that we are looking to ban, but perhaps find alternatives and even incentives. Ten years ago, approximately ten years ago, we adjusted our noise ordinance, which included tweaking the hours of operation for leaf blowers, which ended up being a win for residents because it gave us a reprieve from early morning leaf blowing noise, especially on the weekends. And as our city evolves and we continue to live closer and closer to each other, and we continue to want to raise our standards on how our world and environment we live in should be treated. We do have to take careful review, as Councilwoman Price mentioned, these issues and issues that impact our quality of life. And I think it's timely. So I appreciate that you brought this forward. I look forward to the report coming back. And as the councilwoman mentioned, I'm hopeful that we're looking at alternatives and incentives. Years ago. There were. Rebate programs for folks that wanted to switch out the types of leaf blowers that they purchased. And if those opportunities existed, that would be great. It's very important to be sure that folks remain as whole as possible in any process that we look to to improve our public policy. Thank you. Thank you. Now, Councilmember Ringo. Thank you, Mayor. The one concern that I have with this issue is that I don't think there's a over expanding study that's going to include what would be the economic impacts on the leaf blower or gardeners trade. I don't get the grunion in my in my area. So my neighborhoods that don't necessarily have access to that type of information or access to weigh in on this issue. The cities that were mentioned there. Yeah, I have no comment on that. They're not they're not my communities. But I am concerned about the effect that it would have economically on the businesses that provide our gardening gardening services to throughout the city, not only in the second, third and fifth, but also in the sixth, seventh and eighth and ninth in terms of what they do. So I would want I'm not I'm not saying I would oppose this. I'm saying that if we're going to do a study that's being comprehensive as possible, they include the economic impact that this would have if we were to have complete ban or the economic impact it would have if we were to require our gardening services people to switch from a gas power to an electric power or any other alternative power and power manpower that breaks into doing this kind of service. So I would want staff to also include that. As far as that, what would be the economic impact of switching the leaf blower capability of people? Thank you. I see no other public or. I'm sorry. Let me get a public comment. Any public comment? Please come forward. Hello again. Ryan Serrano, first district. Um, I mentioned that I own a business called Earth Store Technology, one of the services that we provide as ecological landscape maintenance services. But we only do really like fine gardening maintenance, so we don't do any mowing below service. We only actually take care of food, productive spaces or native habitats. And but what I can say is that my father, I grew up doing landscaping work at my father, and that's where my background is. And he had a mambo service and he still has it. And what I can say about that industry overall is that it's highly polluting and highly exploitative of of and underpaying workers. And the noise pollution is a major issue. But I would also speak to the air pollution which all of those gas powered machines have no have no emissions regulation. So they don't have a catalytic converter like a like an automobile does. So to give you an idea, the carbon emissions of a of a mower blower operating for one hour is equivalent to driving most cars 300 miles. And. In addition to that, for people who are doing alternative, who do have some sort of alternative gardening, especially something that's drought tolerant, like a native landscape, the mowers and blowers are actually propagating weeds and actually creating an expense for these for these alternative gardeners that are actually otherwise doing something that's good economically. So I think that that's important. Also speaking to the economics of of workers and and the people who do those jobs now, I think it would create more jobs. When you take away those machines and start recognizing that labor, you would actually increase the number of people who are paid to do skilled work and increase the number of people who are doing things like raking and and pushing brooms. You could actually employ more people and I think you would also see more self-employment versus people working for big companies that, again, exploit people who are willing to compete for low wages. And this is coming from the son of of a mexican immigrant who watched who watched him grow up in the world doing that and also who is employed people in that position. My company has been paying a minimum wage of $15 an hour for the last two years. So I'm light years ahead of 2020 doing work that involves no polluting machines. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening again. In control. And this is not a new issue. I don't see anybody left. Up here that remembers about 20 years ago. Diana man. Waged war against the leaf blowers and a number of us came down and raked leaves out here on the lawn in Lincoln Park while the gardeners used the leaf blowers. And we found out that. It took just about the same amount of time to get the leaves off the grass. However, the gardeners were very much opposed to this, as you were saying. They were afraid that they would be losing their employment. Now, 20 years later, well, actually, it was about 11 years ago that I hired one of those gardeners that was opposing the leaf blowers with the provision that he use, rakes and broom and. He was hesitant at first, but now he uses rake and broom for all of his jobs. He has found that it's cheaper because he doesn't have to buy the gasoline and it's better for his health and a better for his hearing. And he's a complete convert. I did pay him a little more each month to do this. If you do decide or even if you don't decide to ban the leaf blowers, I think you can start in the city parks with Azteca. They stand out there with their leaf blowers blowing leaves off the park grass, which is totally and needed. And along the medians they're blowing leaves off the part of the grass. And this is wasting a lot of money and time and polluting the air. And so if nothing else comes out of this, I hope that you will. The next time that you. Contract with as tecca that you make sure that they don't have they don't use their leaf blowers anymore. Thank you. Thank you. See no other public comment. I'll go back to the council. Councilman Mongo. So I want to kind of add to Councilmember Ortega's comments. If we could also explore some of the options. I know within my neighborhood we have a couple of gardeners. I live in the same neighborhood as an Cantrell, and we have a couple of gardeners who are in the neighborhood multiple days a week. And they actually would prefer if all of their clients would all align to the same day of the week, because then they wouldn't have to come back so many times. And the same is true of some of our poor men, and they've actually spoken to me a few times and they said. What do I say to your neighbor to convince them that everybody else gets their lawn done on Thursday, but they want their lawn done on Monday? Well. A lot of it has to do with what day the trash is picked up and what day the street sweeper is and things like that. And so one might also consider if we consolidated the days in a community when the leaf blowers and lawn mowers were available, because that would actually help from an economic standpoint, the gardeners that have really strong roots that perhaps they would align better and then they'd be feeding the gas to and from each neighborhood and getting more houses on the same street. So I want to be pro-business and ensure that they are helped, but also be conscious of the quality of life of our neighbors. And that could be a neat compromise to consider in the report. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Price. Thank you. I appreciate the comments from my colleagues. What I would like to do is recommend that we move forward with the study first and let's see what the study says and what the alternatives are. And then we can ask for an economic analysis of the alternatives, because I don't know that the Board of Health and Human Services is in a position to do an economic analysis. I think they're just going to talk about environmental impacts and pollution. And to Councilman, your Angus comments, you know, we are all very respectful of one another and I think we all do our very best job when we draft agenda items to be to try to give our colleagues data, but to reference the cities that were listed in our agenda item and somehow, you know, imply that those cities have nothing in common with, you know, a particular constituency, I think really defeats the point of the article. And I say that with all due respect, the the article that was written and it's available online and the agenda item that went along with it really are designed to talk about the impacts of the pollution, which impacts kids regardless of what district they live in. They impact adults, seniors, they impact people. It's not a district based thing. So the pollution issues and the noise pollution and the health environment, the that there's numerous studies available online that weren't included in our agenda item talking about the damaging effects to health and to asthma and to breathing as a result of the dust that's collected are that flows in the air as a result of leaf blowers. All leaf blowers do is they move debris from one location to another that that's all they do. And in the process, they blow the debris into the air. So that is why it's a negative impact on anyone that lives in the area. It's not a district thing. And the cities that were listed on the agenda are listed on the agenda because they happen to be cities that have very successful models. But again, there's a lot of research out there on it. And I would like just to find out, like Vice Mayor Lowenthal said, there's possibly some incentive programs that could help people switch out the equipment that they have and get equipment that's not having a polluting impact on the environment. And the city can possibly be in a position to help incentivize that change over time so that as they get ready to to change out their equipment, there's an incentive the city can provide that gives them a non gas operated leaf blower. So if council will indulge me, I think it would be simpler for this study to have the Board of Health and Human Services do an environmental impact because a report that's the that's the scope of their expertize. And then if it comes back and we want to go further than we can request an economic evaluation, and that would probably be a different city department that would handle that analysis. So that would be my recommendation. Okay. Councilmember Ranga. I appreciate the councilmember for a second district's comments. My my comments were not targeted towards any negativity towards those other cities, obviously. But when we compare Long Beach to other cities, we don't compare ourselves to those cities right there to that. I just want to clarify that very quickly right now. And whether they have successful models or not, that's fine. My comments were more directed in terms of I'm not saying let's proceed with a study. However, we need to include an economic analysis as to what's going to take place. I think that doing a study first and then going back and doing an economic study, doing a piecemeal, we should just do it all at once. I don't want to waste. Let me let me rephrase it. I would like to have staff pursue it in a more efficient manner by looking at the big picture as it's all inclusive, as opposed to bringing one aspect of it first and then going back and readjust analysis that needs to take place again to do it, to go back again, that those are the types of studies that I really don't like. I mean, I've we've gone through this before with other studies that we've had where I was basically opposed to the studies because any time there's there's staff time involved, it there is a cost impact to that staff's time to do that. And if we have one, the deals just with environmental and if we come back and deal with the economic, that's twice the work. So maybe it's a question for the city manager in terms of being able to consolidate or being able to have a two pronged type of study that would address all those issues and in one report. As opposed to doing it one against the other of city manager. I guess it be a question for you. Mayor Councilmembers Honestly. We're here to take direction from the City Council on. Where the council likes to go. I think it I'm looking at what Councilmember Price said, probably the Health and Human Services Department, I mean, commission is not the vehicle to look at the economic impact. But we're not bringing up the economic impacts of it as well as what would that what would it mean for vendors who might be required because of the study? And, you know, I agree with with with the overall impact of what leaf blowers have, you know, gas and all that. I mean, I agree with that. I'm not opposed to that. But there is going to be an economic effect. Should we move in one direction or another? So I'd like to know what what that is going to be, if at all. If time is not of the essence, I see no reason why we. Can't do to dependent. Studies. We would do one with the Health Department Health Commission, come back to. The Council of the Council. So wish they. Could direct it to staff for one of our economic development commissions to then review that piece to come. Back to the Council for a final decision. Okay. So you're saying that you want to do part A before going to part B? I think that it's up to the city council. It's up to you. Well, that. Would be great. As long as as long as there's no hurry to do this immediately. And there was a need to. Well, 90 days was. I think it's a go to the Board of Health and Human Services and at that point they would come back within. What is the days? Within six months. Is that. It? Six months? Yep. But. Okay. We think you can work with that. Great. So we have a motion in a second to go to have board Health Human Services come back in six months. Councilwoman Gonzalez. Okay. Not to complicate things, but I was just suggesting because, you know, we're hearing so much out there, but I think getting the report back first would be great to be able to understand the the environmental impacts. But is it possible as well to have staff come back with just some, uh, some type of incentive programs that could be available to these businesses just so we can get a preliminary idea of what is out there. And then if we do need to come back, go, you know, come back and then go back to the Economic Development Committee. Then we do that. Absolutely. That's we could be checking with HMD on that at on a parallel course. And then with that information, we could then do another look see at this if desired by the council. Okay. And perhaps that comes back just in a two from four, unless the council wants an anything additional with that. But that's certainly. Wonderful. Thank you. Okay. There's a motion in a second. We've done public comment. Members, please cast your votes. Motion carries.