Weekend gardeners may be banned in Oak Park

Tim Deegan, a 15-year resident of affluent, unincorporated Oak Park, has no use for the area's noisy weekend gardeners.

"I wouldn't mind seeing them banned," said Deegan, 69, a retired businessman. "They're loud. And disruptive. And they start too early. And go on too long. And leaf blowers are a big pet peeve of mine to begin with. I don't see the benefit of a blower moving debris around from yard to yard. It's not doing anything."

Not everyone in the posh east Ventura County community between Thousand Oaks and Agoura Hills feels the same.

Nara Choi is one, saying she isn't bothered by the weekend gardeners and their gas-powered lawn mowers and blowers.

"I'm from New York City," Choi, 35, said with a laugh. "I'm used to noise. I mean, there's noise everywhere, right?"

Choi, however, may be in the minority. Spurred by numerous complaints about the gardeners, the Oak Park Municipal Advisory Council on Tuesday night will solicit community input about recommending that the county Board of Supervisors ban them on weekends.

Council Chairman Alon Glickstein said residents have been griping to him about the gardeners for years.

"I've had people come to me telling me that they're upset that gardeners roam around town all weekend long," he said. "They park their trucks in the middle of the street and a bunch of gardeners disperse out with a bunch of lawnmowers and leaf blowers, and they start making noise at 7 a.m.," when they are permitted to start working.

"They tell me, 'At least give us the weekends to sleep in, to have some quiet, to have our kids play on the street without all these trucks and without the noise,'" Glickstein said. "So over time, hearing this over and over from various people, I've decided that this is something that the MAC should consider and try to ban residential gardening maintenance services on the weekends to give our community peace and quiet.

"I think it will take our community to a different level," he added.

The council has no legislative authority. It is strictly an advisory panel to county Supervisor Linda Parks, whose district encompasses Oak Park, and the rest of the Board of Supervisors.

Parks said that besides generating noise pollution, leaf blowers also impact the environment with gas fumes and blowing leaves into storm drains.

"So the MAC wants to get community input before they move forward with seeing if the county can ban commercial gardening services on the weekend, at a minimum," she said.

Such a ban could hurt weekend gardeners in their wallets.

"I think it will affect a lot of their incomes," said gardener Alejandro Montes, who only works in Oak Park during the week, but who is against the possible ban nonetheless.

Montes, who owns Thousand Oaks-based Ivory Coast Landscape & Tree Service, said most of the gardeners who work on weekends do so to supplement their incomes working for larger landscaping companies during the week.

Gardener Adrian Arellano, who also works in Oak Park during the week, agreed that a ban would impact weekend gardeners' bottom lines.

"I think they need the money," said Arellano, of Enhanced Landscape Management in Thousand Oaks. "Working Saturdays and Sundays means more money for taxes or whatever."

But Sandra Giarde, executive director of the California Landscape Contractors Association in Sacramento, stopped short of saying that a ban would absolutely mean less work for gardeners.

"It may," she said. "Or they may have to work with their customers to shift their work to Monday through Friday."

Giarde said such a ban should only be considered as a last resort after all other remedies — such as the use of quieter electric leaf blowers — have been exhausted.

"Outright bans we consider to be a very severe remedy," she said.

Many cities in the country have banned gardeners' leaf blowers — gas-powered or both gas-powered and electric-powered. In California, they include Berkeley, Beverly Hills, Hermosa Beach and Los Angeles. In Ventura County, Ojai is considering prohibiting both types.

Officials of Santa Monica, one of the first cities to prohibit leaf blowers in the early 1990s, say there is no evidence its ban has resulted in financial hardships for gardeners.

Giarde said that because the potential Oak Park ban would only apply to professional gardening services, not homeowners and other residents, it would not fully achieve its stated goal of peace and quiet.

"There's nothing that would prohibit a private homeowner from pulling out his leaf blower," she said. "So I don't think it's going to completely solve what they think they might be trying to solve."

Glickstein conceded Giarde's point.

"The ban will not eliminate 100 percent of the problem, but it will probably eliminate 95 percent of the problem," he said. "And then for the other 5 percent, we would hope that Oak Park residents would be considerate of their neighbors and would also honor this on weekends."

Tuesday's Oak Park MAC meeting starts at 7 p.m. at the Oak Park Library, 899 N. Kanan Road.