Panel OKs Delaying Ban of Leaf Blowers

Less than a week after Los Angeles’ ban on gas-powered leaf blowers officially took effect, lawmakers moved Wednesday to put off enforcing the statute for at least a year.

A three-member City Council committee said the law needs to be rewritten because it is impossible to enforce; some also raised renewed questions about whether the ban makes any sense.

The one-year moratorium must still be approved by the full City Council, where the ban no longer has its author and chief champion, Marvin Braude, who retired last week.

“We have a law that’s inoperable,” Councilman Richard Alarcon said after hearing testimony from the Los Angeles Police Department in a meeting of the Community and Economic Development Committee. “We should declare that the ordinance is not consistent with what the council directed, and therefore is not enforceable, period.”

Alarcon and council members Mike Hernandez and Joel Wachs complained that the new law failed to provide gardeners and homeowners with two warnings before imposing fines of up to $1,000 and jail terms of up to six months for use of the gas-powered blowers within 500 feet of a residence. In addition, the lawmakers want to give gardeners and leaf-blower manufacturers a chance to develop reasonable alternatives to the machines, such as leaf vacuums or other similar devices.

Last week, more than 500 angry gardeners protested enactment of the law with a City Hall sit-in.

Separately, the committee discussed a proposal to reduce taxes on gardeners from the current level of $5 per $1,000 in gross receipts--which is comparable to what lawyers pay--to $1.18 per $1,000.

Gardeners were thrilled by the news of the moratorium proposal.

“That’s what we were asking for,” said Javier Salazar, who helped organize last week’s protest by the Assn. of Latin American Gardeners. “That way we have enough time--and the manufacturers too, they have enough time--to get something else, because there’s no way to work without the blower.”

By 4 p.m. Monday, Salazar said, he had only been able to complete five of his nine customers’ lawns because he was using a rake instead of a blower. “People don’t understand why they have to pay more,” Salazar said. “I say to them, ‘Just call the city, and see what happens, because it’s the law.’ ”

In the first public hearing on the law since it took effect, LAPD officials told the council panel that they have no plan in place to enforce the citywide ban, and that there are currently only four patrol officers assigned to the noise unit, which would be responsible for the leaf-blower law.

“We’re going to need additional resources in terms of personnel,” Cmdr. Art Lopez said, noting that police would have to be present while the leaf blower was in use in order to cite a violator.

Wachs scolded the police for not warning the council in advance of the problems.

“I voted against this ordinance all along, partly because of the types of absurdity that you’re mentioning,” he said. “It didn’t take a Ouija board to figure out that some of the things you’re not talking about would be the very things that would arise.”

City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who replaced Braude, said the problems that police noted regarding enforcement are serious, but should not take a year to resolve. Instead of the moratorium, she suggested a six-month period in which police would simply warn gardeners and homeowners.

Jesus Castaneda, however, said in an interview that he and his fellow gardeners need more time.

“We work so hard, we don’t ask for help,” he said. “If we don’t have the blower, we’re not going to make the same money. Pretty soon, like a lot of people, we’re going to have to go to welfare--and I hate that, I don’t want to do that. They’re going to force us to do that.”