| | Published January 19, 2011
| Quiet Orinda Calls on Council to Address the Noise
| | By Andrea A. Firth | | |
"Yes, I'm back," said Peter Kendall, leader of the citizen activist group Quiet Orinda, as he addressed the Orinda City Council at its first meeting of 2011. Kendall called on the Council to provide another opportunity for the community to debate and discuss the banning of gas-powered leaf blowers in the city. More than 150 residents turned up last November when the potential for limiting the use of leaf blowers was before the Council. At the conclusion of that meeting, the Council voted unanimously against an outright ban.
Kendall stated that he felt what transpired when the issue was presented and discussed in November was a "travesty." "We spent a year researching the issue and submitted a 21 page report... It deserves a proper hearing. That was not what happened in November, and it has to happen soon," said Kendall. "We're going to place it back in your hands. The status quo will not continue. I promise you that," he added.
Barbara Strass, another Quiet Orinda member, seconded Kendall's plea for the Council to revisit the issue and to propose something that would be workable.
A third Quiet Orinda member, Maya McBride, used the words disappointment and shock to describe how she felt about the outcome of the November leaf blower discussion. "I was disappointed by the inaction and that the Council did not find some middle ground, or form a citizen's committee, or find ways to listen to those that are bothered," said McBride, "I was shocked by the lack of suggestions." McBride then played several minutes of a tape recording she made of the leaf-blower noise that she hears in her backyard on Saturday mornings. "I will come back again and again on this issue," stated McBride emphatically as she concluded.
These comments were made during the general public forum segment of the City Council which is reserved for residents' comments on issues not on the meeting agenda. Brown Act guidelines prohibit the Council from responding directly to or engaging in discussion of items not on the agenda and publicly noticed.
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