New Hyde Park civic leader Marianna Wohlgemuth is mounting a campaign to encourage the Town of North Hempstead board to prohibit landscapers from mowing lawns on Sundays.
Wohlgemuth, president of the Lakeville Estates Civic Association, said she and many of her North New Hyde Park neighbors are fed up with hearing the loud drone of the large mowing machines landscapers typically use at all hours on Sundays.
So, she said, she’s conducting an e-mail survey, with the intention of presenting the results to the Town of North Hempstead board at an upcoming meeting.
“The town actually allows landscapers on a Sunday,” Wohlgemuth said. “There’s no time restriction. I’m compiling data to make a case because quite a few people in the neighborhood are coming early in the morning.”
Wohlgemuth said she was “shocked” when town Commissioner of Public Safety Sean Brown recently told her the town had no laws restricting landscapers from working on Sundays.
Wohlgemuth said she wants the town to establish a code that would prohibit landscapers from working on Sundays. She said she plans to consult with North Hempstead Town Supervisor Judi Bosworth on the idea before she brings it before the town board.
“Sunday is the only day we’re with our families outside,” she said.
While she conducts the e-mail poll of town residents in her area, Wohlgemuth said she is also conducting research into village codes in the town use that restrict landscapers’ working hours.
So far, she said, she’s found that five of six Great Neck villages she’s contacted – Great Neck Estates, Great Neck Village, Saddle Rock, Thomaston, Kensington and Kings Point – prohibit landscapers from working on Sundays. The Village of Lake Success permits landscapers to work on Sunday.
Village of Mineola Clerk Joseph Scalero said the Mineola code prohibits law mowing between the hours of 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. daily, but does not prohibit lawn mowing on Sunday.
Wohlgemuth said she expects to complete her e-mail survey by the end of the month and will present her findings at the subsequent town board meeting.
She said she and her neighbors don’t object to individual residents mowing their lawns on Sundays because the noise from a single lawn mower is not that loud. But, she said, the large mowers landscapers uses are another matter – and often a landscaper team will do several lawns at a time in the same neighborhood.
“If one resident runs his lawn mower, that’s not loud. And he’s not running five mowers down the block,” Wohlgemuth said.
Reach reporter Richard Tedesco by e-mail at rtedesco@theislandnow.com or by phone at 516.307.1045 x204. Also follow us on Twitter @theislandnow1 and Facebook at facebook.com/theislandnow.
