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Tucked into the consent agenda at Tuesday’s Pleasanton City Council meeting was a telling change.
The same City Council that mandated an end to gasoline-powered outdoor equipment such as leaf blowers as of June 1 to move Pleasanton’s climate change program ahead was considering a staff proposal to quietly sent it backward. The council pulled the item and deferred action on it until it was determined what cuts are necessary. In the major discussion, the council listened to the staff report on a half-cent sales tax measure, reviewed and commented on potential language. A decision is scheduled for the July 16 meeting.
The city has been buying its electrical power from a 100% renewable firm Ava Community Energy since 2021. The city has been paying a premium price for that all renewable power and the potential of budget cuts is starting to hit home. The resolution would have changed the plan from 100% renewable to 49.4% renewable, saving $80,000 per year or $320k over the next four years.
The council majority did not care about the cost to the city, homeowners or businesses when it mandated electric blowers well ahead of the state’s deadline, now reality is setting in.
It will be interesting to see if the same thing happens at the state level. When former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB32, it turned over the power to achieve climate goals to the state air board that since has issued a series of non-sensical regulations.
The latest came this month when the board applied to the Environmental Protection Agency for a waiver from regulations about interstate commerce. The air board wants to ban diesel power train locomotives by 2030.
One challenge: there’s no alternative. Electric or hydrogen-powered locomotives do not exist. So they’re supposed to be developed in the next five years along with the infrastructure to support them. A pipe dream.
The same applies for the board’s plan to eliminate diesel-powered 18-wheelers. Electric tractors, which are developed, could probably work for local deliveries in the Bay Area coming out of warehouses in San Joaquin or Solano counties. These are predictable enough that. The question will be if massive charging stations can be installed and powered.
Can’t say the same for long hauls coming from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles north along I-5 to the Bay Area. Good luck.
The law requires the board to consider economic costs, a factor it routinely ignores as it strives to be a leader in changing to affect the climate. That doesn’t seem to matter when it comes to expensive mandates—we do pay $1.50 more per gallon of gas than the national average and drive on the poorest maintained roads in the country while contributing a trivial amount of carbon (less than 1%). Think that our economic and military rival China is over 30% and continues to build coal-fired power plants.
Another sign of rapidly changing times in these days of smart phones: For as long as I can remember, I have relied on supermarket inserts in the newspaper to see what was on sale this week and stocked up on meals and filled the freezer. Since printed newspapers (other than weeklies) are rapidly failing and most of us—me included—are digital news consumers, those inserts are starting to go away.
Raley’s Safeway and Lucky typically have shown up in the Tuesday mail, but the marketing departments have been including two weeks in one insert. Now they’re shifting—thanks to the apps—to digital only. It’s still in the familiar format of the insert—for those who download the PDF, but there’s also a digital format.
Just a matter of time before hard copy vanishes—saves money in a low margin industry.
Lawsuit alleges electric vehicle to blame for crash that killed Pleasanton family of fourApril 14, 2026 5:22 pm
New state law prohibits law enforcement from posting mugshots on social mediaAugust 1, 2021 11:12 am
Current drafts for half-cent sales tax measure language are “all revenue from this tax revenue must be spent/consumed in Pleasanton (locally)”. That would exclude all nonresidential contractors, consultants, and union workers because they are not headquartered in Pleasanton.
All city employees belonging to a union cannot receive any of this tax revenue for salaries or expenses. All nonresident suppliers cannot be engaged in business with the city of Pleasanton with this tax revenue.
PG&E, AVA Community Energy not domiciled in Pleasanton cannot receive earnings from this half-cent tax revenue.
This list can be lengthy with the current draft language.
The city is providing a six-month grace period for the leaf blower requirement. This issue is not enforceable, (per Mark Dennis, Chief Code Enforcement Officer, he cannot run a license plate to contact offenders). The council took out the wrong piece of equipment. Gas-powered lawn mowers produce four times the VOC, CO, NOX, PM10, and CO2 more so than leaf blowers.
“The same City Council that mandated an end to gasoline-powered outdoor equipment such as leaf blowers as of June 1 to move Pleasanton’s climate change program ahead was considering a staff proposal to quietly sent it backward. The council pulled the item and deferred action on it until it was determined what cuts are necessary.”
If the city has budget/revenue problems, then no funding should be spent on any “climate change” programs. They are feel-good measures from out of touch politicians that don’t care how it negatively affects the daily lives of the average person. Isn’t it enough that the state won’t let people buy gasoline powered leaf blowers vs. the city government telling people they can no longer use equipment that works/is already owned?
Do you have any solutions to address climate change? That would be a more productive piece of writing. Maybe you believe it’s a created hoax.
What Other Than Man Impacts Climate?
Our moon moves away from Earth at 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) per year. Using the speed of light scientists estimated this distance, roughly the rate at which fingernails grow, according to NASA, 1.5 billion years ago there was a collision between Earth and the moon.
Earth’s magnetic north pole has been gradually drifting north-northwest by more than 600 miles (1,100 Kilometers) since 1831, based on magnetic fingerprints on ancient rock over 20 million years. The earth’s poles last flipped 78 thousand years ago and have flipped every 200 to 300 thousand years. These changes are slow-paced over thousands of years, not instantaneously. The speed has increased from 10 miles per year (16K) to approximately 34 miles (55K) per year.
Volcanic eruptions cause solar irradiance impacting Earth’s climate. Piles of earth’s tectonic plates lift, break into smaller pieces, and crash into each other. This event builds mountain ranges and in so doing, changes wind and ocean currents across the globe.