To the editor:
I offer three of my own concerns about the leaf blower bylaw proposal for your consideration. If you share my concerns, I hope you will vote against this bylaw, regardless of its form or substance, at the Town Meeting.
- This will cost you money. By definition, this will limit the pool of contractors you can hire from, severely limiting your ability to price shop those services. It’s hard enough to find cost-effective landscaping services here in town; can you imagine how much it’s going to cost when you need to hire one of the handful of “specialty contractors” who only use battery-powered equipment?
- Not all gas leaf blowers are the same. There are portable ones, powerful push models, and older guzzlers. The largest ones sound like a snow blower or a lawn mower (four-cycle)… are we only limiting the small (two-cycle) ones? If we limit the larger ones, shouldn’t we also limit lawnmower use and snow blower use? What about smaller wood chippers? And larger wood chippers? What about blowers used for tick and mosquito spraying (basically leaf blowers with a tank on the back). Are those restricted? They aren’t technically leaf blowers, but the apparatus is essentially identical. My point is very simple: this rapidly becomes problematic in some pretty obvious ways.
- Is this a good use of our time? Do we really want the town involved in restricting things like this? It’s a slippery slope. Especially in a town with large lots and large attendant maintenance requirements, we are setting a scary precedent. I personally feel there are many more pressing issues we can attend to.
Sincerely,
Seth Rosen
53 Bedford Rd., Lincoln
Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters 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 Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.
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