When Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs said she wanted to push for a citywide public smoking ban, Mayor Bill White told her she was on her own.
“This wasn’t his priority,” she said. It still isn’t.
Although he is reluctantly seeking a compromise, which he earlier promised to introduce before the year is out, he’s running out of weeks.
Here’s how we got here:
Sekula-Gibbs, the only physician on City Council — who has pushed for a “Healthy Houston” and sometimes sports a white lab coat at the council table — said she was waiting for the right time to press for a ban, knowing the mayor had to be on board.
The mayor controls the council agenda, so if he doesn’t support something, it doesn’t happen.
A few weeks after a story appeared in the Chronicle about Sekula-Gibbs’ desire for a smoking ban, the mayor announced, unbeknownst to her, that he was going to propose his own plan, incrementally changing existing rules.
He said he would ban smoking in restaurants, but not in bars, and that his proposal would be phased in over two years to try to minimize negative effects on businesses.
“The mayor has his own way of doing things,” Sekula-Gibbs said.
White said that under his proposal, restaurants with bars in their establishments would be allowed to maintain smoking areas in the bars, as long as they provided “real separation” from the dining areas.
Sekula-Gibbs called the mayor’s plan illusory.
“Unless you can build a wall, it’s worthless,” she said. “It’s more of the same.”
Under Houston’s current ordinance, restaurants and other public buildings are allowed to have smoking areas if they are properly ventilated. Smoking is banned within 25 feet of entrances to public buildings.
Sekula-Gibbs knows passing a citywide ban will be difficult, but says that if her sampling of the community is accurate — she has received 226 e-mails backing the ban and 40 against it — Houstonians want smoke-free places to enjoy dining and drinking.
She also contends that a full ban on smoking in public facilities would help smokers quit, arguing that a reduction in availability of places to smoke will encourage smokers to stop and others not to start.
White has been known to say that people don’t go to bars to get healthy. He is trying to find a middle ground, checking to see how far other council members are willing to go to respond to public sentiment without upsetting the restaurant industry.
Juli Salvagio, executive director of the Greater Houston Restaurant Association, said restaurant owners are not crazy about the plan that’s been laid out because they think their businesses will suffer.
“We know something is coming,” she said. “We’ve been told we’ll have an opportunity to look at it and make sure it’s not completely out of line.”
Salvagio said White’s plan is a compromise the association can live with, but she is worried that some smokers will take their business to surrounding cities and counties with looser smoking rules.
Sekula-Gibbs said she has contacted mayors in eight surrounding communities, including Sugar Land, Galve-ston, Kemah and Bellaire, about establishing some geographic consistency. They are all interested and waiting to see what Houston does, she said.
The mayor promised to put his plan up for a council vote before the end of the year. His chief of staff, Michael Moore, said Thursday that an ordinance will be written by the end of the year, but probably won’t be voted on until the beginning of next year.
Sekula-Gibbs still hopes the smoke clears sooner rather than later.
“I was counting on what the mayor said,” Sekula-Gibbs said. “I’m hoping he has the same calendar I do.”
Originally written By: KRISTEN MACK
