St. Charles Update…
City-imposed smoking ban appears dead in St. Charles
ST. CHARLES – City leaders here have backed off efforts to pass a limited smoking ban and now want to only require businesses to post signs saying whether they allow customers to light up.
Mayor Sally Faith and Council President Dave Beckering announced plans for the sign ordinance at a City Council meeting Tuesday night.
None of the seven other council members attending objected, although no vote was taken. Two were absent.
Faith, Beckering and others previously had endorsed a city smoking ban exempting the Ameristar Casino, which channels millions of dollars in tax revenue each year to her city.
Exemptions for bars, veterans halls and bowling alleys also had been under consideration.
Any city ban, they had said, would have been aimed at blunting efforts of the St. Charles County Council to impose a countywide prohibition that might cover Ameristar.
Now, Beckering said in an interview, he has reason to believe the county body won’t try to do that again.
“I believe if they do anything relative to a smoking ban, they’ll do something to make sure they don’t put the casino at a disadvantage,” he said.
That’s a reference to Ameristar’s long-held argument that a ban on smoking at its St. Charles casino would result in a significant loss of business to the Hollywood Casino in nearby Maryland Heights if a ban wasn’t also imposed there. Casinos are exempt from St. Louis County’s smoking ban.
Faith and Beckering also noted the seven-person County Council has three new members since it took up the smoking issue last year.
A draft of the sign bill submitted by Faith would apply to all public places, including retail businesses and places of employment. “People need to know when they go into a place whether there is smoking or no smoking,” Faith said.
The council held three public hearings on the smoking ban idea in May.
Of 102 people who either spoke at the hearings or contacted the council by email, Beckering said, 51 opposed a total smoking ban, 44 supported a total ban and two wanted a ban with exemptions. Five others had other positions.
“Certainly we had very passionate people on both sides,” Beckering said. However, he said, “after all this discussion, we really don’t have a consensus here.” The County Council last summer decided to put before voters in November a two-proposition countywide package but it was blocked by an election official and a circuit judge.
Under that plan, voters would have first been asked whether to ban smoking in workplaces and enclosed public places.
A second ballot question was on exempting places restricting customers and employees to people 21 and older, including the casino and bars.
The only smoking bans now in the county are in O’Fallon and Lake Saint Louis. They are among the strictest in the metro area, with no exemptions for bars.
Originally written By Mark Schlinkmann
