[B]URLINGTON — Nancy Kaplan hopes the Queen City will ban smoking in public parks and beaches this year.
Kaplan, a former city councilor who chairs the Parks Commission, urged the Burlington City Council at its most recent meeting to support the ban, which is before the Ordinance Committee.
“It’s one of those things whose time has come,” Kaplan told the council. Kaplan works for the Health Department, and while she’s not part of the smoking cessation team, she sits next to them and that makes her keenly aware of the public health impact of secondhand smoke, she said.
“What I know from a public health perspective is that the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has said there is no acceptable level of secondhand smoke,” Kaplan told VTDigger on Wednesday.
Kaplan, who served on the council’s Ordinance Committee, said efforts to ban smoking in Burlington’s public parks date back at least three years. There are more than 1,000 municipalities nationwide that ban smoking in parks, according to figures compiled by the advocacy group American Non-Smokers Rights Foundation.
“If New York City can do it, I think that’s really telling,” Kaplan said.
At the last Ordinance Committee meeting on Sept. 24, Councilor Chip Mason, D-Ward 5, the committee’s chair, said there are “compelling arguments” for the ban, according to the meeting minutes. Mason noted that New York City’s ban doesn’t extend to the parking lots or roads along parks, which could make a ban more practical for smokers, he said.
At the meeting, councilors removed a section of the ordinance that would ban smoking within a 25-foot buffer of parks and beaches. Proper signage was also discussed as a detail that needs to be ironed out. Mason suggested that members of the Parks Commission return to testify at the next Ordinance Committee meeting Oct. 21 to further vet the proposal.
Mason and the other two members of the ordinance committee, Max Tracy, D-Ward 4, and Sharon Bushor, I-Ward 1, did not return calls requesting comment Wednesday.
City Council President Jane Knodell, P-Central District, who opposed the Church Street smoking ban, said she doesn’t support a ban in parks either. She said in an email that the ordinance goes too far and sends a message to smokers that they’re not welcome in parks their tax dollars help to pay for.
Kaplan acknowledged that the ban is likely to be met with resistance by smokers and those who see smoking as a matter of personal liberty, but she said she’s undeterred. “In my mind, there isn’t a personal right to smoke in a public place,” she said.
Church Street has pushed smokers to “the edge” of the downtown retail area, which has improved the experience for many shoppers, she said.
Enforcement of the ban would be tricky, she said, but as with Church Street, the ordinance is meant to be a deterrent, she said.
“It allows everybody else to point to a sign and say, ‘Hey you’re not allowed to smoke here,’” she said.
