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The Monona ad hoc smoking ban committee met for three and a half hours tonight. In brief, the committee voted to move its recommended smoking ban implementation date up to June 1, 2009. The vote was 4-0 with one abstention (Mitch Marks). Voting in favor were alder Kathy Thomas, alder Bob Miller, Mary Possin and Greg Meyers. Committee member Harold Polzer was excused to attend a funeral.
The committee used the Breath Free Monona proposed ordinance as a template and spent most of the night reviewing and tweaking it. The committee members deserve the community's thanks - otherwise this is truly a thankless job. I think most everyone on the committee and council feels squeezed between competing and inelastic demands.
I hope to have the full ordinance - as tweaked - to post in the next day or so. It is still a work-in-progress. The committee will meet on May 29 and make a recommendation to the council for its June 2 meeting.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
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so, what does this do to the petition I so proudly signed?
ReplyDelete(my wife told me I better....).
Hi Doug,
ReplyDeleteDoug is correct. This has been a difficult situation, and although things have been heated at times, the system is working. As a committee member, it seems to me we are headed to a June 1, 2009 implmentation date. In the spirit of keeping this positive, I'd like to offer a friendly challenge to the Smoke Free Monona folks, along with those who have supported their petition, amd all who support some sort of Monona smoking ban including myself. My challenge is for all of us to commit to patronizing these businesses on weekly basis once they go Smoke Free. A lot has been said to convince business owners that becoming Smoke Free should help their businesses, so those who believe this need to make it happen. If we want these businesses to be smoke free so we have the freedom to patronize them, then we must do so. I don't think anybody wants to see a business owner in financial trouble after a ban, so let's do what we can to make sure that doesn't happen! Once they go Smoke Free, grab your neighbors, your gal or guy pals or whoever you like to have fun with and head down to one of our localing watering holes.
Mary Possin
Thanks for the comments Mary. I agree.
ReplyDeleteQ" so, what does this do to the petition I so proudly signed?"
The ad hoc committee's recommendation is just that and does not do anything to it. If the council adopts an ordinance before the petitions are filed and certified, then that preempts the petitions.
I hasten to add that the statute is brief, does not answer all situations, and there is not a lot of case law applying it. In other words, the legal answers are not completely clear on some questions.
The pressure is on the city pols to realize that the referendum being proposed is not about compromise but public health. Tobacco smoke is a danger to a person's health, not a matter of having fun at your local watering hole.
ReplyDeleteTsunami's, Hurricanes, the flood of cancers and health costs are upon all of us.
Public Health is not a product to be profited from or to garner votes from.
Sign the referendum petition and push the pols to a date in 2008.