BY MICHAEL J. LEWIS
The Roslyn Board of Trustees voted on Tuesday night to ban the use of gas-powered leaf blowers in the village during the summertime.
The 30-minute meeting held via Zoom saw the board agree to pass amendments and prohibit the use of gas-powered leaf blowers from June to September.
Calling gas-powered blowers “noxious” and saying they contribute to pollution, Mayor John Durkin and the board agreed they could still be used for spring and fall cleanups after landscapers told the board that battery- and electric-powered leaf blowers are not powerful enough yet to do the fall and spring cleanups.
“We think we’ve crafted a good law, based on the Town of North Hempstead’s law,” Durkin said.
The amendment passed without objection from the public. PSEG of Long Island is offering incentives to residents who switch to electric lawn equipment or leaf blowers that use rechargeable batteries.
Trustee Craig Westergard inquired about the possibility of electric- and battery-powered lawnmowers, but other trustees said they had been told the costs for those devices would be prohibitive, and no move to ban gas-powered lawnmowers was considered.
The only other matter discussed at the meeting was a request by a local homeowner to obtain a permit to keep a backyard pigeon coop that was beloved by his late mother.
Behrooz Lavehim told the board that he has a coop inhabited by eight pigeons (he had nine but one flew away recently) in his yard, and that he would like to keep it to honor his mother, who died from cancer last year.
“This is what we have left for my wife and my kids, to remember her by, and it’s a daily reminder of her to us,” Lavehim said.
The board asked him a few questions about where the pigeons are kept, if they are free to roam, and also inquired if his neighbors had complained. (None were present at the meeting Tuesday.)
After Lavehim offered to obtain letters from his neighbors stating they were fine with the coop staying in his yard, Durkin agreed that would be helpful and tabled the request until next month’s meeting.
