To the editor:
Michael Coppock has recently written a letter to the editor (Lincoln Squirrel, Dec. 20, 2015) that ascribes rather dark intentions to the Lincoln Leaf Blower Committee. He says that it’s clear to him that this presages our introducing legislation at the next town meeting. In fact, the opposite is true—we decided last spring that rather than initiate a call for a partial ban (no usage during the summer months), we would go the way of education and hope that when people learned about the major issues associated with leaf blower use, they would confine their use to major leaf cleanups rather than the weekly use of clearing walks and pathways of grass clippings during the season when leaves are firmly attached to trees.
Yes, the Board of Health limited its findings to the town center. But the fact is, most Lincolnites visit the town center regularly, and there are a number of residents who actually live within the business district. Furthermore, we hear from people outside of the business district who have serious health concerns about both the noise and the airborne particulate matter.
In a recent meeting of our group, we also attempted to address the challenging issue of how to proceed with studying this problem in a way that maximizes civility and cooperation—not easy. We encourage members of the community to please share with us your concerns and ideas on how to proceed in a way that most embraces the goal of a collaborative solution.
This is an ongoing process. We fully appreciate that not everyone in town shares our concerns or agrees with our perspective. (In fact, the committee itself is not in lockstep on this issue.) Our hope is to pursue this conversation in an open and community spirited way. Mr. Coppock’s angry and adversarial tone contributes little to help create that kind of climate.
Our website is www.lincolnleaves.org. Comments, suggestions or questions can be sent to quietlincoln@gmail.com.
Sincerely,
Robin Wilkerson
Member, Lincoln Leaf Blower Committee
Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters must be about a Lincoln-specific topic, will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.
The leaf blower issue came to my attention one hot September day when I was playing tennis at the schools. Classes were in session with the windows open for relief from the heat. Meanwhile, an army of leafblowers were battering us with a barrage of sound, ruining my tennis experience, and, more importantly, making it impossible for the teachers to teach. The landscapers spent an hour removing a trace of grass clippings from the sidewalks and parking lot, surely an unnecessary task. That’s when I realized that the overuse of leafblowers was starting to affect our quality of life. While I acknowledge that the use of leafblowers is helpful during the fall leaf blitz, the new goal of removing every last vestige of natural vegetation from all outdoor surfaces is a waste of time, money, and fossil fuel. I hope that people will reconsider that goal and curtail leafblower use as much as possible.
Hello neighbors,
I am not involved with it, but I am sure this leaf blowing project started because a group of concerned people cares about our health and well-being in our town.
Each one of us, of course, has a set of different priorities in terms of what concerns us and our health in our community. But, whatever our points of view, we should appreciate the ones who try to make our lives better.
We should give people a chance to tell us what they find out. And if listening is not possible — which is too bad because what gives us humans the ability to grow so incredibly is the fact that we can learn from others’ experiences — at least we should be polite and constructive.
As a journalist, I appreciate the difficulty of the reduced space one has to express so many ideas in one little brochure. People make a living helping companies and organizations do that kind of work.
Let’s give everyone a chance to contribute where our interests lie. Only together we can make a difference.
Until the children and staff of Lincoln get a new school with the air quality they deserve, the issue of Leaf Blowers is of little importance to me. I’ve also grown tired of the town trying to ‘police’ every little thing we do. There are issues that are far more important to some than Leaf Blowers: ticks and tick-born diseases that are out of control and harming both our residents and pets, the outdated stop-sign by the library that is just waiting for a major accident to happen, and again, the unhealthy school environment that our future generation has to succumb to day and day out……to name just a few… It gets tiresome. I hope others feel the same.