Long Night

It was a long night, largely unpleasant.

Not wanting to, but on principle feeling it was the right thing to do, I introduced a substitute motion that would have delayed implementation of last year's leaf blower bylaw, and formed a new committee to try and come up with a better way to address the issues we were charged with resolving.

If my motion had passed, we would have continued to grapple with leaf blowers for another year.

That - believe me - is not something I wanted to do.

But I also don't like walking away from a job so miserably dealt with, so clearly not complete.

I'm both relieved and dismayed that my motion failed.

Ultimately I voted for the recommendations presented to us.

As I've discussed before, I don't feel right about telling people they cannot use leaf blowers.

I do believe they are used irresponsibly many times, and that behavior should be stopped.

When cars are used irresponsibly, we don't ban cars: we look for ways to discourage the behavior we don't want.

We have not figured out a way to accomplish this with leaf blowers yet.

(Saving any arguments about carbon emissions and the environment for another day. I don't feel our debate about leaf blowers has ever - successfully anyway - risen to this point. If we do concern ourselves with this someday, I think we should deal with emissions and not what devices produce them, at least without very strong justification.)

For reasons I've already discussed, I voted against the bottled water ban.

Much of the testimony from other opponents was turning me off.

The more I heard from people also opposed to the ban, the more I felt like changing my vote.

"If you ban bottled water, people will just drink other stuff!"

Speak to the problem being addressed. When people want a soft drink, they get a soft drink. Water satisfies thirst, it is craved when needed. People won't stop drinking it.

"If we can't carry a water bottle to some event, we won't have any water to drink!"

You can carry a bottle you've filled with water just a easily as you can one you've purchased at the store, can't you?

"Think of all the kids at sporting events!"

Back when, in the uh, olden days I guess, we brought large igloo containers to youth sporting events, filled with water and ice.

When I hear arguments that I believe are weak or disingenuous, I am tempted to change sides on principle.

I do still think a ban is not a good idea.

Not yet anyway.

Get people thinking about what a waste this is, and we'll see what people want to do down the road.

So for now we are done talking about bottled water and leaf blowers.

I've heard rumors that the original proponents of self-serve gasoline are going to ask us to hold off and not pass that article this year.

It almost seems we are fast running out of things to get angry at each other about.

I'm confident though that we will work around this.