Image depicting reduced height to building along Glenridge Ave. (WEBINAR/MONTCLAIR TOWNSHIP).
A community meeting regarding the Lackawanna Plaza Redevelopment Plan will be held on Tuesday, Aug. 8. The meeting will be held in the auditorium at Glenfield Middle School, 25 Maple Avenue and will begin at 7 p.m.
Planning Director Janice Talley, along with consultants Ira Smith from Smith Maran Architecture + Interiors and professional planner Keenan Hughes from Phillips Preiss, will present the revised plan and will be available to answer questions. Fourth Ward Councilor David Cummings will also be present.
This meeting follows a webinar presented by the Township, detailing changes in the revised plan. The revised plan can be downloaded here.
Maybe the leaf blower ban crowd could search the revised LPRP for the hyperbolic terms they commonly used in their fear-based campaign. Or, just search on some plain vanilla terms like carbon. Or fossil. Or, my favorite – climate. Maybe they could also request the LPRP incorporate Air Quality Action Day restrictions. And I am glad we won’t talk about open (pervious, if you say so) spaces contributing to the heat island effect of this 8 acres. And we are all grown up now and have put away childish initiatives like curbing light pollution.
As I have consistently said, I will support the majority on this LPRP…as long as it is covered by our leaf blower ban.
Oh, and FYI, here is a link to an article last week on The Architect|s Newspaper (https://www.archpaper.com). OK, but does Mass have a leaf blower ordinance like ours?
https://www.archpaper.com/2023/08/fossil-fuel-bans-green-bank-energy-codes-prohibiting-all-glass-buildings-massachusetts/
And maybe we can hope for a little less hot air blowing around this site, gasoline generated or otherwise!
You do realize leaf blowers are not in the Environmental Commission’s Climate Action Plan?
Frank, tell me about the countless number of workers, typically immigrant and without a voice in this matter, who are criminally forced to inhale the toxic fumes emitted by the blowers. It seems the Environmental Commission’s Climate Action Plan didn’t factor that in, did it?
silverleaf,
I’m going to be nice to you because you’r playing catch-up. The argument shifted some months ago to the health issues of blowing particulates around. Councilor Russo signaled this change in the June Council mtg. And he, and the passionate adult & minor advocates had all the science to back it up – somewhere. And don’t forget this braintrust of advocates had the Air Quality Action Day language added out of nowhere. So, I’m like, OK. Let me give these people who are so concerned over the minority workers a little rope. Because they will certainly hang themselves with it…and they did, and you did. I don’t mind people having opposing views. I just get irritated to people not having educated views and throwing attitude back at this who have different views. And educated ones.
I have been quite consistent about protective equipment and what protective equipment needed is kinda obvious with leaf blowers. And I said if you want to protect workers – which should be our 1st priority – they must wear ear protection and masks. Then stipulate clearly what minimum protective equipment is mandated AND stipulate the employer must ensure their workers actually wear it.
Nope. None. Just ask. Anyone. And then post me what you find out. Seriously. Can you do this for me and others?
Silveleaf, let’s overlook the “criminally forced” designation of what you see as immigrant labor and focus on your previous sentiment: perhaps you meant to say “…the countless number of workers, typically immigrant and without a JOB…” which is what I imagine they will be when our sanctimonious blowhards conveniently set aside all of that pompous sloganeering on sanctuary towns and human rights and the dignity of the individual and no human is illegal, in favor of the much more satisfying NIMBY impulse, which is really what this is all about.
Nothing personal, sliverleaf, but I suspect you will never have to look an Eduadorean immigrant in the face and say, ‘Adios baby, it’s you or your leaf blower.’ But please don’t pretend that that immigrant worker with children back home whose paycheck is keeping them fed and clothed is actually someone who factors into your green-vanity conceits. Sanctimony and hypocrisy are even more toxic when people are so obvious about it.
And while we’re at it, would anyone care to ask the Council, on the record, whether gas mowers are the next to go? That should do away with that pesky immigration debate once and for all, no problema!
Silverleaf – My issue with the leaf blower ban is that i don’t think these workers are going to see any relief. I think the landscapers are going to flee the town, and the workers are going to continue on in Bloomfield, Nutley, Cedar Grove, etc. For change like this to work it has to happen at the state level, not the local level. We will just make landscaping harder to contract and much more expensive by doing this in a vacuum.
TooBigToFail,
In your haste and overzealousness to criticize my pompous, toxic, obnoxious, green-vanity conceit, hypocrisy and sanctimony (did I miss any?), you’ve also managed to mischaracterize my comment in your very first sentence, ‘let’s overlook the “criminally forced” designation of what you see as immigrant labor’. My comment has nothing to do with that and everything to do with their health and safety. As you cannot question the veracity of my conviction, your argument fails colossally. Of course, you are going to have to take my word for it as you don’t know me from Adam. Additionally, I never mentioned their children back home whose paycheck is keeping them fed and clothed, or otherwise socio-economic rationale. But since you did, perhaps it assuages your particular sense of guilt for a well-kept lawn.
Frank, I’m not playing catch-up as you erroneously suggest. Did I mention Montclair anywhere in my initial comment? I am fully aware of the recent TC changes. I am strictly referring to those municipalities that have no regulation at all RE masks, protective equipment, etc for the workers
3rdwarder,
The workers are probably the most unhappy of everyone affected by the ban. They will be breaking their backs using rakes and underpowered blowers. I would bet that the activists behind the ban don’t have yards big enough to need landscapers or may even be renters. I would also bet that the activists also pay way less in taxes than the services they take from town. One more bet. They would never ban a service that they need even if it was bad for workers or the environment. Montclair grandstanding at its finest. Virtue signal all day as long you don’t have put your money where your mouth is.
silverleaf,
The (our) leafblower ordinance hearing is next week. There is ample opportunity to modify the worker protections language.
Let’s just see how Montclair handles the limelight.
I mow my own lawn, silverleaf, fyi. I just like to think I’ve got some empathy left in my bones–but empathy for the workers, not our self-appointed propagandists who insist on dictating what is right and what is wrong in our cushy little world.
Flipside — how about all those big nasty trucks with their fossil-fuel burning engines that clog the Walnut Street parking lot after driving in from land that was once part of pristine nature but is now defiled by human intervention and where fossil-fuel powered tractors collect the harvest with the help of immigrant labor. Of course, it’s the farmers market. One of our most precious amenities. I know a few people in town, ardent greenies, who don’t even blink when a UPS truck comes down the street. Have you ever stood behind a UPS truck when the driver re-starts the engine? Which they do on average 200 times a day and, often in this precious town, after delivering little alt-health potions in little boxes with styrofoam packing that “I just can’t get anywhere but that holistic health co-op in Taos.”
But ah, the Leaf Blowers!
It would be honorable if the meeting next week really were about protecting immigrant laborers. Let’s not kid ourselves. It might be about them in a very, very oblique way. No, this is about irritated people who have the time and self-righteousness to demand changes that they want, and have us believe they’re for our own good. Once the leaf blower ban is checked off the old to-do list, they’ll find something else. I’ve heard this kind of absolutism described in many ways, but the one I recognize in my more despotism-adjacent fellow citizens is ‘preening moral vanity.’