Leaf-blower ban hums along quietly in Sonoma

If the Great Leaf-Blower Debate gave you slow-motion whiplash, you’d be forgiven your lingering cynicism. After all, it dominated public discussion for five years in Sonoma, generating policy that failed to coalesce.

City officials began with restrictions but then embraced a ban – and then they didn’t. Then they embraced a partial ban – on gas-powered blowers only – which triggered a referendum that became a ballot initiative.

Multiple council members voted one way about leaf blowers, then switched to another – before it finally came to the ballot box.

On Nov. 8, 2016, Measure V won in a squeaker, and gas-powered leaf-blowers were officially verboten. The voters had finally - mercifully - laid the issue to rest, by a margin of just 19 votes. And life carried on as before in Sonoma, if slightly more quietly.

Enforcing that quiet is one Patrick Galvin, code enforcement officer for the City of Sonoma. He works three days a week to respond to community complaints, ferret out scofflaws, issuing warnings to offenders, and then tickets.

According to Galvin, from when the gas-blower ban went into effect in January 2017 through the end of the year, the city had tallied a total of 104 violations.

Most of those infractions were resolved with a written warning, in the form of a cease-and-desist letter, according to Galvin. Second offenders get an official citation, which comes with a $250 fine. Third violations - and all subsequent infractions - are assessed a fine of $500, a sum that would easily cover the cost of a battery-operated replacement.

“But one case we actually took to a hearing,” said Galvin. “It was an out-of-town crew, and they paid a substantial fine. They didn’t even contest it.”

That company, Cagwin and Dorward Landscape, of Novato, were cited for using gas-powered leaf blowers at the Sonoma Valley Inn and fined $3,726 for their trouble.

Eighteen months have now passed since the ordinance was adopted, and Sonomans have begun to fall into line.

“Since January of 2018 we’ve had just nine cases,” Galvin said, proving that city residents and business owners have started making the adjustment.

But compliance isn’t the only adjustment locals have made. Some citizens have devised a fiendish work-around.

“One of the unforeseen consequences of the ordinance is that the larger companies went out and bought electric leaf-blowers, but those batteries only last a half hour,” said Galvin. “And so some have bought gas generators for charging those batteries. It’s permitted under the ordinance. It’s a consequence the ordinance didn’t foresee.”

How does a Code Enforcement Officer enforce code in Sonoma?

“We’ve got a handful of people who are the ‘eyes’ and regularly call in,” Galvin said. “They were probably proponents of the ordinance. They’re up in arms. Sometimes the reports are anonymous - nothing wrong with that - and if there’s any reference point I’ll go out and drive around, trying to find it.”

Picture a pleasant middle-aged man circling the block with windows down and ears cocked, listening for the unmistakable shriek of a gas leaf-blower.

The nature of code enforcement requires that Galvin catch most violators red-handed.

“Unless we have very credible witnesses who are willing to come in, hearsay is not optimal,” he said. Catching violators cold, of course, requires mobility and perhaps stealth, as he follows his ears toward a high-frequency whine. On a musical scale, the machines - running full bore - blow a high C, relentlessly, unwaveringly, at 115 decibels.

Battery powered leaf-blowers, on the other hand, issue 95 decibels of sound, and a Briggs and Stratton gas generator produces 59. Combined, the battery blower and generator make 39 more decibels of noise than the gas blower, a sum that perhaps disappoints Measure V’s authors.

In any case, the worst-case scenarios sketched by the ordinance’s opponents appears not to have come to pass after all. The city’s aesthetic didn’t disintegrate ruinously, the laborers most impacted by the ban didn’t abandon their tasks, and Sonoma carries on - like 32 California cities before it - more quietly and with less dust, its civic attention finally turned to new matters.

Darryl Ponicsan, for one, describes himself as “grateful” to the voters who supported Measure V. Ponicsan is a Sonoma-based writer known for his 1973 novel, “The Last Detail,” and the novel and screenplay to its 2017 follow-up, “Last Flag Flying” – not to mention such well-known films as “Taps,” “Nuts,” “Vision Quest,” among others.

As someone who works from home – and does so best under a certain degree of solitude – Ponicsan was one of the earliest and most high-profile critics of the city’s many leaf-blowing landscapers. To him, the multi-year battle for the gas-blower ban was well worth it.

“I marvel every morning at the difference,” Ponicsan told the Index-Tribune. “I hear a hum here, another there, and I realize not long ago it used to be roaring 2-stroke engines.”

He says that, for those like him who work from home, it’s “the difference between a productive work environment and a destructive one.”

And not only that, adds Ponicsan: “I can’t believe the operators themselves aren’t grateful to be out from under those nasty machines.”

Contact Kate at kate.williams@sonomanews.com.