Leaf Blower Referendum

There's a post up over at truepersons about the Leaf Blower referendum. As usual, truepersons comes through with a lot of background material, including relevant video.

I offer my disagreements with some of their analysis in the comments section, which I've reproduced here.

You can read the full post at truepersons.com: Arlington’s Leaf Blower Ban

Below is my comment to the post, which captures my feelings about the referendum at this time. Feel free to weigh in with your own opinion, if you like.

(reposted from truepersons.com)

I’ll offer up some disagreements with parts of this analysis.

First, I’ve already explained in other places that I opposed this ban, and voted against it.

I think that calling a special town meeting would have been the right move, and that moving forward with a referendum was a political mistake.

First, the Town Meeting vote that passed this bylaw was not overwhelming. 95 - 85, and that means there were a fair number of absences that I’ll bet would not be absent for this vote if it comes up again.

Second, there’s a fair amount of blame to be had by opponents for not getting more involved until after the article was passed. As a Town Meeting Member, I only heard directly from the proponents. No one contacted me and said "don’t pass this."

Further, opponents didn’t have their act together during Town Meeting debate. The debate could crudely be characterized as proponents presenting us with studies, photographs, and other evidence, while opponents said that people that didn’t like leaf blowers ought to just leave town.

I still voted against it, but I had to remind myself that I was not sitting in a court of law, weighing evidence presented to me. Had I been doing that, the proponents certainly made a better case to Town Meeting than the opponents did. This is a legislative body, however, and I’m not restricted to just considering the arguments put before me.

I think that if opponents put a fraction of the energy into lobbying Town Meeting Members that they have put into getting this referendum put on the ballot, they’d easily succeed in getting a vote of Town Meeting to go their way.

However proponents of the leaf blower restriction have also been successful in this ordeal, and they are in a position to win some concessions also.

It may be that some easy compromises are available, perhaps insisting that the machines not be used in a way that knowingly blows material onto other peoples property, and that they not be used within so many feet of another dwelling.

Something that at least partially addresses a few of their concerns.

I suggest this because, if anyone’s paying attention, you’ll notice that the proponents are getting smarter, and stronger, over time. Opponents would be wise, I think, to reach concessions now, rather than later.

Why do I think that moving forward with a referendum a mistake? It puts opponents in a very adversarial stance with regards to not only the proponents, but the town, and especially Town Meeting.

Is the referendum going to be legally successful? Their chances are not good, to say the least.

Who are they going to need to work with should this fail?

The very group of people they are squaring off against with this referendum.

That doesn’t seem like a wise move, to me anyway...