The ordinance — which went into effect on Sept. 1, 2024 — describes leaf blowers as “harmful to human health” and has specific limitations to how and when they can be used. It includes an amendment that stipulates that the City Council must vote to ban gas-powered leaf blowers by Sept. 1, 2026.
Jalin Sead, chair of the City Council’s Ordinance Committee, said Thursday that there are still some unanswered questions about whether the city could handle transitioning entirely from gas-powered leaf blowers to electric.
“We want to make sure that we’re doing the right thing for the constituents. One we want to make sure that we’re not adding another financial burden,” he said.
The ordinance said electric leaf blowers can be used any day of the year but only on impervious surfaces, like sidewalks, parking lots and streets. It also only allows the use of both gas-powered and electric leaf blowers on “lawns, gardens, parks, woodlands, playing fields, and other landscapes” during two time periods: in the fall between Oct. 15 and Dec. 15; and in the spring between April 1 and June 1.
It also limits the allowable hours to use either type of leaf blower, which are only permitted from: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday; and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sundays and federal holidays.
Sead said the committee has three options: to do nothing, to vote the ban into effect, or to vote to change the dates in the current ordinance for the ban to go into effect. But following its July 21 meeting, he said it’s unlikely the committee will vote on the ban by deadline.
“I kind of got the temperature that we weren’t really here and ready to move the ban into effect,” he said. “Most likely, we’re not even going to vote on the ban, or we’re going to push it out to like, say, 2029, or even further.”
During the July meeting, City Council President Josh Goldstein said there wasn’t much to vote on yet because the committee needed more information. He said the leaf blowers have been a rising issue for residents, who want to see something done.
“I think there are genuinely a lot of people who are really perturbed, you know, just like bummed and bothered when, like, they hear two leaf blowers going at seven in the morning on a Saturday,” Goldstein said during the meeting.
Sead told The Norwalk Hour that improving enforcement of the current ordinance is a priority for the committee.
“We’re just really trying to fine-tune the enforcement,” Sead said. “It’s been something that we heard a lot from our constituents and it’s something that we really want to just make sure that we deliver upon.”
Sead said the committee requested two things from city officials before further discussing the ban: an estimate of what the cost would be to do it and a report on what the fiscal impact would be for the city.
“I really want to stress that we have no way to really see what the impact will be on the private businesses,” he said. “But this will pretty much correlate it, and we’ll see if it’s a huge financial burden on the city. It’s definitely going to be a huge financial burden on businesses and regular citizens.”
Sead said residents should expect a “beefy conversation” about the subject sometime in September. He said nothing will happen if the council doesn’t vote on the ban by the deadline, and that it just won’t go into effect until the City Council decides what the next steps will be.
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