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LETTER TO TOWN MEETING MEMBERS JUNE, 2022

Dear Town Meeting Member,

I am writing to you about Warrant Article 27.
I hope you will take a few minutes to read this letter. Leaf blowers may not be important to you, but they are an important tool in the landscapers toolkit and crucial to our businesses.The adoption of Article 27 will be a death knell to the small business landscape community.For those of you who are new to Town meeting, here’s a quick recap. A few years back, there was an attempt to ban leaf blowers. The moderator formed a committee made up of a broad section of members and chaired by John Dogget. Over 21 meetings later, a lot of research, actual testing, discussion and compromise, we crafted bylaws that allowed gas leafblowers for the heavy leaf clean ups at certain times of the year. We are only allowed to use 67 DB machines and must switch over to electric for the summer. Most of us have done this. Is it perfect? No, but it is a work in progress. I work closely with the DPW and speak to noncompliant companies informing them of our bylaws in the country. We currently have some of the strictest bylaws regarding these machines and Brookline DPW is enforcing them and the Town is quieter.

What about climate change? The machines have been redesigned to pass strict EPA regulations. Look at the pie chart below. Leafblowers are low hanging fruit in terms of CO2 emission, but they emit only 0.038% of all CO2 emissions in the US. Banning them may make you feel like you are doing something important but in reality you are not. You are hurting small businesses like ours and the mainly immigrant population who does this work.

What About electric machines? Well, if they worked well, I would be the first to completely switch over. Here is my experience with electric. First off, the smaller batteries do not hold a charge on “high”and work for less than half an hour. Multiple batteries per machine are needed and many of us have experienced actual fires from carrying around the batteries in our trucks. They are expensive but I am willing to bear that cost in the off season.I recently bought three electric backpack blowers that claim to have longer battery life and they do. The problem is that the battery is extremely heavy to carry on the back because it's huge.The other design issue is that the blower is hand held and also quite heavy. It is not supported by the backpack and I could only work with it for less than thirty minutes before myhand was dead. These machines are just not ready for prime time. They work fine for the summer, but cannot be used for the heavy leaf clean up in the spring and fall.

What does this ban mean to Landscapers? I will no longer be able to do cleanups and will either close my business two months early or change it altogether and reduce staff. We cannot expect people to rake nine hours a day or work with machinery that cannot do the job and will cause injury. I am one of the few women owned businesses who works in the Brookline parks. We clean up Olmsted Park and it takes us three days with ten people. We use rakes, blowers and pruners, and parkgoers shower us with compliments as we are doing our work.  I actually don’t make any profit on that job, I do it because it is a point of pride. I cannot imagine how I would possibly do this work without the gas blower.

How will the immigrant population be hurt? There are very few people who want to work in the landscape business. Along with roofing, it is one of the most grueling jobs. Taking away this tool will make an already difficult job impossible and lead to wage reductions and job losses.The proponent of this Warrant stated at a public meeting that “it’s unfair to have a minority of workers within this town, most of who don’t live in this town, subject residents to noise and destruction caused by gas powered leaf blowers.” I one the other hand think we should be grateful that we have workers who are willing to cut our grass, rake our leaves and shovel our snow. Please click on the link and enter the password to listen to that meeting and meet some of the men, women who work in the landscape community and you will hear directly how it will hurt their livelihoods. You can also hear from many homeowners who depend on their landscapershttps://brooklinema.zoomgov.com/rec/share/YQRODD3HLWmsSPS8pDdREzNT-_NoRrAzvWMs62S3HB4eISkStQaMnYKjzXB7PJmN.n9nQy06BuexHrEOCPasscode ^20PnuXm

How will residents be hurt? Our clients are made up of elderly, disabled residents, working families and single breadwinners. For a variety of reasons they depend on us to keep their properties clean and safe.They depend on us for snow removal too. Many companies have already left Brookline and taken these services with them. Clearing the heavy leaf fall is hard and heavy work and not everyone can do it themselves. Any company that decides to rake or use electric blowers will be passing on a huge price increase to the homeowners. It will take so much longer per client and it will definitely effect how many clients can be serviced.One more blow!Covid was a huge challenge to small businesses. We all had to figure out a way to keep going against all kinds of roadblocks. Just when things started looking better, the price of gas has hurt our business. We are all mom and pop businesses. We have all built our companies literally from the ground up. My success has enabled me to give back to my employees and the Town.The cleanup at the park, the new rotary installation near Jamaica Pond and the seasonal container work at Amory, are all things I can do because we are successful.If this warrant goes through I certainly will not be able to give back in this manner and perhaps become one more casualty in the small business world. I hope that this letter gives you a glimpse of our industry and invite you to call or email me with any questions. I also invite any TMM to come work for me for a day to experience first hand the reality of working with the electric machines, rakes and shovels to get the job done.

One last point-why should anyone with over one acre or the Town be virtually exempt from the gas ban? If you care to learn more, please visit us at Brooklineleaves.org Please vote NO ACTION of Warrant Article 27.

Faith Michaels,Owner, Faithful FlowersFormer P5 TMMFormer Transportation Board memberPresident, Kids Clothes ClubBrookline residentMike Ellis, Owner
MJ Enterprise, Inc.Eric Kaplan MCLP
K&S LandscapeJonathan Kurker MHK LawncareRonald YeradiYeradi LandscapingJoshua LandscapeMonique AllenThe Garden ContinuumDavid SauroSauro LandscapingFrank Bilotta
Bilotta Landscape, IncKaren MoultonTM LandscapingChristie Dustman, PrincipalChristie DustmanSteve GoldGold LandscapingRichard MalleyMalley LandscapingOttavio MarianoMarino LandscapingLuiz Moniz,Moniz LandscapingJonathan Kurker MHK LawncareCatherin Hanss,Landscape CollaborativePeter Gately,Brookline LandscapePeter DiClementeDiClemente Landscaping