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E-mail This StoryFlower Mound Town Council members heard arguments for health Monday when considering adopting a smoking ordinance.
They also heard arguments for freedom.
Ultimately, they voted for freedom to be healthy.
The council voted, 3-1, to adopt a smoking ordinance, which is set to take effect Jan. 1, 2009. Council members Al Filidoro, Tim Trotter and Joel Lindsey voted in support of the ordinance. Council member Jean Levenick voted against the ordinance. Council member Jeff Tasker was not present.
The ordinance will prohibit smoking in all restaurants, bars, retail stores, indoor places of employment and public parks. It also requires a setback of 25 feet from any entrance to a public building. Hotels and motels will also prohibit smoking, but there will be a maximum of 10 percent of the rooms designated as smoking rooms.
Smoking will be allowed in private residences, personal automobiles, public sidewalks, outdoor places of employment that meet other ordinance provisions and parking lots within public parks, as long as setback requirements are met.
The issue sparked a debate among residents, making the evening a battle of personal rights and the right to be healthy. Of the 13 who spoke on the issue, six favored the ordinance, citing health issues.
“When we’re out at the ball fields, and my kids are holding their breath to walk by someone who is smoking, that is so offensive to me,” said resident Amy Brown. “In a town where we’re so proud of our environment … if you want to smoke in your house, smoke in your house.”
Some who were against the ordinance said they opposed it because they didn’t feel it was the government’s right to dictate where people can smoke.
“There is so much government intervention in our lives telling us what we can do,” said resident Sylvia Imboden, who said she quit smoking 10 years ago and goes to restaurants that have non-smoking environments. “Where does it end? I know that smoking causes cancer, but I don’t think that we can start legislating what people can eat, drink and where they can do that in restaurants. Restaurants come into town and choose to be non-smoking, and that’s the way it ought to be.”
Local restaurant owners also opposed the ordinance, saying it would negatively impact their business. Jason Louden and Terry Seale own Point After North, a sports bar and grill located on Cross Timbers Road. Seale said 80 percent of his customers are smokers.
“This is my livelihood,” Seale said. “If you pass this, we’re out of business.”
Council members said they saw both sides of the concerns but leaned toward the health issue.
“You have the right as an individual to put whatever you want into your body,” Filidoro said. “But, you don’t have the right to pass that on to someone else. I don’t have a problem with individual rights, but I do have a problem with affecting other people.”
Levenick said she couldn’t support an ordinance that affects a person’s property rights.
“We get on a slippery slope when we, as a government, start telling someone how they can conduct business in a private business,” Levenick said, “where they pay rent for, where they pay property taxes for, and where their lives are invested in. Eighty percent of the restaurants in Flower Mound by choice are non-smoking. That’s many places for teenagers to work, for people to go have dinner and for people to take their children to. What (ordinance supporters) are asking us to do is to control your life so that you don’t have to make a choice. You want to be able to walk in to someone’s private property and dictate to them how you want that atmosphere to be. And, that’s not what entrepreneurship is.”
When consulted by council, town attorney Terry Welch said that while a business owner may own the property, there is a difference between a property owner of a home and a property owner of a business because the public can freely enter the business.
As part of the ordinance, a maximum penalty of $500 will be issued for violators.
The ordinance is patterned after similar ones in Southlake, Plano and McKinney, which prohibit smoking in enclosed areas that are open to the public.
Trotter said residents have asked for a smoking ordinance for a long time.
“This isn’t something the council dreamed up,” Trotter said. “We’ve had a great number of residents requesting this, and if we don’t pass this, we’re going against what a great number of residents have asked us to do.”
