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Seeking a consensus on smoking law
KansasCity.com
7/14/2009
It was, in the language sometimes used to describe the summit meetings of world leaders, a frank and fruitful exchange.
But this meeting, held a last week, concerned a potential smoking ordinance in Raytown.
“This committee is biased,” Mike Horne, co-owner of the Eclipse Bar & Grill, complained at one moment.
“In all respect, I don’t think this committee is biased,” Mayor David Bower said at another moment.
Horne and several other members of a Raytown mayoral smoking ordinance committee wrestled with the issue. After 90 minutes, they produced a proposed draft that appeared to exempt bars from tougher smoking restrictions. Committee members, however, seemed inclined to not use the word “bar,” instead describing those establishments as ones that visitors under a certain age couldn’t enter.
The draft ordinance still must be submitted to the city attorney for review. The measure could be read for the first time when the Board of Aldermen meets Aug. 4.
What encouraged Bower last week was the dialogue itself.
“There is a lot of eagerness for something to come out, but I would urge you to make sure that this is right for you,” Bower told the committee. “Don’t hurry it through, and do the right thing for the city.”
Once, there was urgency among Kansas City area clean air supporters to add municipalities to the list of those going smoke-free. Each community that did could be added to an equation calling for an 85 percent compliance rate in the area.
That would, in turn, trigger an extension of Kansas City’s smoking ban to restaurants and bars.
But Kansas City voters rendered all that arithmetic moot in April 2008 when they approved a smoke-free ordinance. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed Kansas City’s smoking ban last month, although opponents said they still wanted to appeal to the state supreme court.
Yet Raytown’s smoking status remains significant, said smoke-free activist Joyce Morrison.
“Raytown is now the largest suburban community on the Missouri side of the metro that does not provide any protection for secondhand smoke in public places and the workplace,” said Morrison, a Clean Air Kansas City spokesperson.
But Raytown doesn’t need a smoking ordinance to please a metrowide interest group, said Raytown Alderman Jim Aziere. Its residents support one, he said.
According to a 2007 citizen satisfaction survey conducted by ETC of Olathe, 60.6 percent of the Raytown residents who responded supported an ordinance prohibiting smoking in public places.
“I’m a Republican and I support business,” Aziere said. “But Raytown is mostly a bedroom community. We don’t have a Power & Light district, or a Westport. The people who live here and pay the bulk of the taxes should choose the community’s values and standards, and decide whether Raytown is going to be the ashtray of Kansas City.”
Walking his ward during a recent re-election campaign, Aziere, said, he noticed how residents — unprompted — had inquired about a possible smoking ordinance.
Aziere began corresponding with the Missouri Municipal League, and visited other cities with clean-air ordinances, such as Lee’s Summit, Independence and Parkville.
The plan prepared by Aziere two years ago would have allowed smoking in bars that didn’t serve food, but would have banned it in restaurants, defined as any establishment with food sales of 20 percent or more.
Aziere said he was frustrated by city officials who insisted they first concentrate on economic development issues. But a recent public forum on a proposed smoking ordinance brought the issue front and center.
Among those who testified in favor was Donald Potts, a longtime eastern Jackson County physician and associate professor emeritus at the University of Missouri-Kansas City department of medicine.
Potts is a resident of Independence, and that bothered Horne of the Eclipse Bar & Grill.
“I got irritated,” Horne said.
“People come in from outside of our city and make all these statistical pronouncements that are not true, about how business actually will increase after smoking is banned.”
Horne said he asked to be on the committee, and he sounded optimistic after last week’s meeting.
“They did show some compromise,” he said. “I know smoking is bad, but it is not against the law. If my customers wanted to go non-smoking, I would be the very first one to do it.”
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