City Mulls Plan to Ban Leaf Blowers After 7 p.m.

The La Cañada Flintridge Public Safety Commission on Monday voted 4-1 to recommend a change to the city's ordinance to set an earlier time limit on noisy landscaping equipment such as leaf blowers.

The City Council, which has final say on changes to the municipal code and appoints commissioners, will consider the recommendation to cap the use by residents or professional gardeners of equipment that registers higher than 65 decibels at 7 p.m. daily instead of the current 9 p.m. cutoff time. The current permissible start time of 7 a.m. will remain as is.

The existing statute bans preparatory "or post-landscaping work of any nature" during the established time frame.

In June the city council received a letter from a resident who was disturbed by landscaping equipment used near her home during evening hours, according to a staff report, which based its recommendation on the notion of closer consistency between the city's landscaping and building construction noise regulations.

The law allows construction equipment that produces more than 65 decibels of sound between:

• 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays during daylight savings time
• 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. during standard time
• 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays
• No noisy construction is permitted on Sundays and holidays.

 "The [proposed] ... ordinance is intended to promote public peace and tranquility during evening hours, while also allowing for landscaping work to be performed by residents and contractors," the report states. "The ordinance also creates a more consistent code of law on city noise policies."

Commissioner Thomas Schafer voted against the recommendation because "if it's not broken, don't fix it," he said after the meeting. "To base a new ordinance on one complaint on an issue that if it is really an issue, I would expect to see more complaints. I feel it's something better handled by neighbor to neighbor and the community within La Cañada rather than us legislating."

A real-life example of what 65 decibels actually sounds like "would be a room full of laughing people, something that's not irritating," Chairwoman Kay Linden explained after the meeting.

In terms of proximity to a leaf blower or lawnmower, Linden also clarified that a sound measuring device must indicate more than 65 decibels from an adjacent property line.