The Eugene City Council continued the battle between smokers and public health officials last week, tightening the rules for smoking areas in bars and restaurants.
The council voted last Wednesday to increase the amount of open space required for smoking areas from 25 percent to at least 75 percent.
The city has pledged $15,000 to help business owners comply with the new costs.
The figure is based on city estimates of the number of owners that will need to apply for building permits, but Ward 3 City Councilor David Kelly said the number isn’t set in stone.
“We would allocate more funds in an instant,” Kelly said.
The city will give business owners one year to comply with the new rules.
The new rules are a clarification of rules set up for the areas after the city banned smoking in public places and places of employment in 2000. At that time, the council left the specifics of the smoking areas to the city manager and staff.
But some on the council weren’t pleased with what came back.
“The adopted definition of what was outdoors surprised a number of us and a number of those in the medical community,” Kelly said. Some on the council were concerned that the 25 percent requirement wasn’t living up to the intent of the ordinance.
“The original goal was to protect the health of workers in places of employment in Eugene,” Kelly said. “The key was not changing the ordinance, but bringing the ordinance back to the philosophy we originally intended.”
The open-space mandates are written as percents instead of number of walls to allow design flexibility for owners. To comply with the new rules, a square smoking area would only be able to have a roof and one wall.
Another reason for the change was to clarify the rules for business owners, Kelly said.
There have been problems with some businesses looking at the intent of the ordinance and some looking at the letter of the ordinance, Kelly said.
This created a situation where some businesses had better covered smoking areas, which attracted more customers.
“We wanted to level the competitive playing field,” Kelly said.
Some on the council feel the original ordinance is already effective and that changes will harm business owners forced to comply more than it will help employees.
“The ordinance is in its place and doing the job it’s supposed to do,” Ward 5 City Councilor Gary Pape said. “I don’t feel employees are subject to additional risk.”
Pape feels the force behind the changes hasn’t been bar owners, workers and patrons, but county health officials and anti-smoking groups. He is also worried the changes will hurt business owners who will be forced to modify the smoking areas they built after the 2000 ordinance.
Pape, a non-smoker, said that in a perfect world, no one would smoke, but that it’s a choice for some.
“If smoking is legal, which it is, we need to balance health risks with the ability for businesses to thrive with patrons who are smokers,” Pape said
The changes have hurt some bars more than others. Taylor’s Bar & Grille has a completely open smoking area and won’t be forced to change it to fit the new requirements.
Taylor’s owner Chuck Hare has seen ill-effects since bars first had to comply in 2000.
“It has been really hard for some bars,” Hare said. “It’s put some bars out of business.”
Despite that, Hare has seen the positive effects at Taylor’s since the city banned indoor smoking.
“I would wake up coughing, doing things smokers do,” Hare said referring to the time to before the ban.
“The majority of my staff, we all agree it’s better on our health.”
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