Dear Neighbors,

Please write, call or email City Council members by June 13, 2005. Urge them to enforce the leaf blower ban.

city.council@cityofpaloalto.org

Please attend the City Council meeting on June 13th at 7:00 PM.

On June 13, 2005, our Palo Alto City Council will decide whether to enforce or rescind the leaf blower ban.

See muni code 9.10.060 (f) http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/government/municipalcode.html

In fairness, we have given the leaf blower industry 5 years to improve their technology and they have not done so. Now they seek to overturn the ban and seem to have persuaded Police Chief Johnson to support them.

The yard maintenance industry has fought every city that has tried to ban leaf blowers. In each case, they argue that bans are based on racism and create economic injustice. Like Big Tobacco, this industry provides inaccurate and blatantly false information to city managers, city councils and police departments.

The facts are;

Debris blowers cause air and noise pollution which damage our health.

See American Lung Association State of the Air 2005 Report for Santa Clara County

http://lungaction.org/reports/sota05_county.html?fcc=06085

Yard maintenance is a highly lucrative business in Palo Alto. The average maintenance outfit with 20 yards a day rakes in $15,000 a month. Yet many of these outfits exploit minimum wage workers, who are the ones forced to use these awful machines to the detriment of their own health, as well as ours.

No business has the right to contaminate our neighborhoods.

Bans have worked successfully in many California cities -- Los Altos, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and more.

They have experienced no negative impact on city budget nor law enforcement. Yard maintenance businesses have not lost jobs or money!

A good research site on this subject is Zero Air Pollution Los Angeles: http://www.zapla.org

Please help make Palo Alto be a clean and peaceful city.

More info: contact Patricia Targ pk@targ.com