Resident urges council to separate wood chipper from pallet-yard storage expansion

Michelle Burke, who identified herself in the public-comment period as "Michelle Burke, president," urged the council to require staff to separate a proposed storage expansion from an associated wood chipper operation at a local pallet yard. Burke told the council the public wants the items to be considered separately and said the project report was "badly flawed," citing truck routing through Leech Street, unsafe truck speeds, and a noise analysis that averages intermittent peak noises rather than accounting for peak and repetitive disturbance. She asked the council to direct staff to separate the chipper request from the storage expansion and to require mitigations including altered truck access, a later start time for noisy operations (she contrasted frequent 5 a.m. starts with a 7 a.m. cutoff), and screening along the fence to reduce noise and restore the area's pastoral character.

Burke urged code enforcement action for existing problems at the pallet yard and named a person on the record (Gary Price) in connection with permitting and compliance concerns. She described the neighborhood's property values as tied to tranquility and said that continuous loud, repetitive noise and heavy truck traffic would harm that character. The record contains no formal staff response at the time of her remarks; the council did not take action on that item during the meeting. "So direct staff to separate the chipper from the storage expansion and fix the conditions of expansion to respect the community," Burke said on the record.