To the editor:

From our support of the East Bay Bike Path over 30 years ago to recent sustainability updates to our beaches and oceanside parks, the Barrington of my time has always supported wellness through sustainability.

Sustainability is at the core of the S-0520 proposal to allow Barrington access to a pool of rebate money to upgrade from polluting, noisy gas leaf blowers to quiet, powerful electric leaf blowers. 

Furthermore, the immense amount of landscaped green-spaces that we collectively care about here will benefit from being quieter, cleaner, and generally nicer at any given time. 

With a well-written ordinance that provides unity and clarity on the sunset date for dirty gas blowers in our community, Barrington can lead the charge in helping landscaping businesses with large customer bases upgrade their equipment (such businesses naturally perform these upgrades continuously through equipment replacement over the course of every couple years) while remaining competitive with each other. 

I believe it should be our objective to make the last day of 2024 the sunset date for gas-powered blowers in my town—giving two seasons of landscaping upgrades to allow for the new electric blowers to find their way into the toolset of landscapers, amateur and professional. 

I'm glad to support the planning of this small but significant step in the right direction, and I hope we will enable passing some of those benefits to our local landscapers and DIY-care experts.

CJ Hilty

Barrington