Evanston alders voted to up the ante on a plan to buy electric leaf blowers for landscapers Monday night — increasing funding for the project from $80,000 to $180,000.
Ald. Tom Suffredin (6th) said he’s tired of having the Council always talking about leaf blowers.
Residents just want it to be quiet, he said. Contractors want help with the cost of switching from the noisy gas leaf blowers to quieter electric ones.
Paying for enforcement — having a staffer in the Health and Human Services Department become the leaf blower cop — doesn’t seem to make sense, he added.
Health and Human Services Director Ike Ogbo, whose department enforces the leaf blower ordinance, says the enforcement program does seem to be having an effect.
He said the city has received less than 20 complaints about gas leaf blowers this month, compared to 500 last November.
Ald. Juan Geracaris (9th) proposed the increase in funding .
The leaf blower ban was pushed both because of complaints about noise and environmental concerns about pollution from the gas powered devices.
But many landscapers, especially those with limited English language proficiency, didn’t get the message about the new ordinance until tickets started being issued, and they lacked funds to buy the expensive new devices.
The new bulk purchase plan was approved on a 7-0 vote.
This is an absolutely insane thing to spend taxpayer money on
I agree that this is not a good use of taxpayer money. What about the landscaping firms that purchased battery operated leaf blowers last year? Will they be reimbursed?
This is a good move by the city.
People don’t realize that it is VERY EXPENSIVE to save the world and the middle to lower class are the ones footing the bill. Guess who are the ones complaining sitting atop their ivory tower? Exactly.
All of these ideas about going green cost a lot of money. Paper bags are not cheap, electric stoves are not cheap + they are nowhere near as effective as a gas stove. It’s another expense for a business whose taxes just went up, whose payroll just went up, whose rent just went up. All of that cost goes into the pricing or people get fired.
If you’re paying attention out there you are seeing the upper class is still spending while the middle to lower class has begun to cut their spending. It’s getting very tight for middle/low income families right now. Continuing to keep adding on to their tab is choking them.
In order to end this leaf blower nonsense the city needs to front the cost. Going green is very expensive and the equipment isn’t near as good. So, businesses are paying more for a less adequate product.
I commend the city for lending a helping hand to businesses that contribute to the city of Evanston.
Are these payments restricted to landscapers who live in Evanston?
Otherwise, let homeowners who use landscaping crews foot the bill via temporarily higher fees.
On a related note, recent years ago Greenwise and Nature’s Perspective didn’t have electric blowers. Now they’re considered “the big guys.” My bet is they got that way because a large number of customers *want* electric equipment and other landscapers would gain more clients if they just switched over.
In any event, the ones who delay switching over the longest will have the most difficult time finding clients in the future as law-abiding residents will seek out crews with compliant equipment and stick with those vendors long term.
In addition, residents in neighboring suburbs who want electric crews will also be switching based on vendors they see in Evanston. This is a growing trend. The crews who get ahead of it will likely win out in the end.
The ban was both inevitable and necessary. Policies like this have been rolling out since the 1970s. What other business model could get a half century lead time to correct course, stubbornly refuse to adapt, and then get bailed out by taxpayers? The cost will be borne by residents, the majority of whom do not use these services. It’s entirely regressive: those who have the disposable income to delegate their lawn care will get artificially cheap service, and those who don’t have the such funds are still required to pay via their taxes.