A discussion among Santa Clara County supervisors on everyday gardening tools this week morphed into concerns about immigration witch hunts.
The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously axed Board President Otto Lee’s proposal for banning the use of gas-powered leaf blowers in unincorporated neighborhoods. Other supervisors worried the law would send a message encouraging residents — annoyed by the noisy equipment — to call the police or U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) on laborers who might be undocumented immigrants.
District 1 Supervisor Sylvia Arenas was the first to push back.
“I just don’t want it to be a reason why residents (report) immigrants that are doing their job … either to get people in trouble with ICE or police,” Arenas said at the meeting. “That will give the kind of message to our community that if we’re prohibiting the use, then somebody’s going to enforce it. People will come to ask us, ‘How are you doing that? You bothered with an ordinance, so let’s see how you’re enforcing it.’”
Lee acknowledged Arenas’ concern and said that wasn’t his intent. His board colleagues agreed there was no ill will.
“I don’t see any type of active enforcement, sending code enforcement to say, ‘Aha!’ That’s absolutely not the approach, especially with what you mentioned,” Lee told Arenas at the meeting. “That’s the last thing our county should spend any resource on whatsoever. That’s not my intent.”
Cities across the Bay Area have grappled with regulating climate impacts and proliferation of noxious fumes and noise from leaf blowers, harming both residents and the workers operating them. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law banning the sale of new gas-powered leaf blowers after 2024.
Lee brought his proposal forward to address those same issues — with written support from dozens youth climate action groups and nonprofits. His policy would have also limited the use of electric leaf blowers to specific hours, based on rules in places such as Los Gatos, Sunnyvale and Cupertino.
His proposal was whittled down to exploring options for a rebate program to help small business owners transition to electric-powered leaf blowers. His idea was to either get county support or partner with community groups. San Jose leaders in 2021 launched an electric leaf blower pilot program to decrease air pollution.
County Executive James Williams was hesitant about the rebate idea.
“We would not be recommending the creation of a county funded rebate program at this time,” Williams said at the meeting.
Several days earlier, Williams put forward a recommended budget that would cut 279 positions across different social safety net services to absorb at least $70 million in anticipated federal assistance cuts and a county budget shortfall. That shortfall is estimated to swell to $476 million over the next five years. A majority of the cuts will happen in the health and hospital system, which is 30% of the county’s proposed $13 billion budget.
Supervisors ultimately agreed to have county officials report back to them on existing rebate programs available in the community — and options for getting the word out. Supervisor Betty Duong also requested the county’s Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement and Department of Environmental Health engage with small businesses and workers about those programs.
Duong called that approach “more incentivizing, educational and worker-based.”
Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X.
