Bar Harbor says NO to smoking in car ban
Bar Harbor rejects smoking-in-car ban
June 13, 2007
By Bill Trotter
?
BAR HARBOR — Local voters rejected a proposal Tuesday to ban smoking in cars when children are present but agreed to borrow up to $1 million for a local work force housing project.
By Bill Trotter
?
BAR HARBOR — Local voters rejected a proposal Tuesday to ban smoking in cars when children are present but agreed to borrow up to $1 million for a local work force housing project.
The proposed smoking ban was defeated by a 70-vote margin. There were 369 votes in favor of the measure and 439 votes against it.
Had voters approved the ban, Bar Harbor would have become the second municipality in Maine after Bangor to ban smoking in cars when children are in them.
Inspired by the Bangor ban, former Town Councilor Jeff Dobbs called for a council vote on the matter in March. The council voted it down 5-2, but Dobbs had it placed on the annual town meeting ballot by collecting more than 234 valid signatures of registered local voters in a petition drive.
Bar Harbor council forwards smoking ban proposal to voters
?
April 04, 2007
?
BAR HARBOR – Local voters will get the chance when they cast municipal ballots in June to determine two issues about the relative health and affordability of their community.
?
April 04, 2007
?
BAR HARBOR – Local voters will get the chance when they cast municipal ballots in June to determine two issues about the relative health and affordability of their community.
The Town Council decided Tuesday to have voters determine whether to ban smoking in cars when children are present and whether to give $1 million to a proposed workforce housing project off Sandy Lane.
With very little discussion, the council voted 5-1 to have voters decide the smoking issue during local elections on June 12. Councilor Jeff Dobbs, who has spearheaded the drive to enact the smoking ban, voted against the motion. He said he wanted the proposal to be discussed on the floor at open town meeting rather than decided at the ballot box without further debate .
Bar Harbor man circulates smoking-ban petition
March 16, 2007
Bill Trotter
Bill Trotter
BAR HARBOR – Jeff Dobbs is busy making good on a promise he made to his fellow Town Council members last week.
He’s collecting signatures on a petition for an ordinance that would ban smoking in cars when children are present.
Dobbs had brought the proposal to the Bar Harbor Town Council, thinking that the town should take a stand for children’s health by adopting an ordinance similar to one adopted in Bangor earlier this year. The concept is a no-brainer, Dobbs has said, because it’s clear that secondhand smoke can have dire health consequences for people, especially children.
But the rest of the council didn’t share his enthusiasm. When time came for a vote, only Councilor Robert Garland cast his with Dobbs.
The remaining five voted against the ideas for a variety of reasons. Some said the issue was better left to the state. Others said they had concerns about civil liberties and about giving the Police Department more work to do.
Dobbs, however, was undeterred. He said that if the council rejected his proposal, he would go around it by getting enough local voter signatures to have the proposal placed directly on the warrant for annual town meeting.
By Thursday, Dobbs said he had collected about 80 percent of the signatures he needs.
“As of right now, pretty close to 200, I think,” he said. “People are calling up now to come down and sign it.”
He said he has to collect at least 234 signatures, which is 10 percent of the number of local voters who cast ballots in the most recent gubernatorial election. He said he believes he could get a lot more, but that his goal is to collect 250 before he turns it in to the town clerk. He wants to have enough in case some signatures turn out not to be valid, he said, but not too many that the clerk has to verify a lot of unnecessary signatures.
Dobbs said he had received one phone call from a resident who is upset by the proposal but that most comments he has heard have been supportive.
He hopes to collect enough signatures so he can bring the petition back to the council at its April 3 meeting, so it can consider the proposal again. If council members turn it down a second time, he said, it would go to voters at the town’s regular annual town meeting on Tuesday, June 5.
It is the third petition Dobbs has spearheaded in the 15 years he has been a councilor. He led a successful petition drive in 1983 to keep a tourism information buildings from being built in Agamont Park and in 1989 successfully petitioned to end the town’s yearlong experiment to allow only eastbound traffic on Cottage Street.
Dobbs said Thursday that the health information he has been provided since he first proposed the smoking ban has convinced him he is doing the right thing. He said he hopes that if enough towns take action the Legislature will step in to create a statewide ban.
“It just seemed like a good thing to do when I started,” he said. “Now I know we have to do it.”
Car smoking ban nixed
March 8, 2007
By Dick Broom
By Dick Broom
BAR HARBOR – The Town Council voted 5-2 Tuesday night not to adopt an ordinance making it illegal to smoke in vehicles when children are present.
Councilors Jeff Dobbs and Bob Garland voted in favor of the ordinance. Mr. Dobbs said he felt so strongly about it that he would circulate a petition to bring the issue to a vote of citizens at town meeting.
Councilors Jeff Dobbs and Bob Garland voted in favor of the ordinance. Mr. Dobbs said he felt so strongly about it that he would circulate a petition to bring the issue to a vote of citizens at town meeting.
The vehicle smoking ordinance he proposed was nearly identical to one the Bangor City Council adopted in December. The only difference was that a first offense would have resulted in a warning, not a ticket.
Every member of the council said they understood the serious health effects of second-hand smoke on children.
“It’s reprehensible that people smoke in their cars with their kids,” Councilor Paul Paradis said.
But the majority of councilors said they didn’t think the town should be telling people what they can and can’t do in their own cars.
“It’s a very sad thing that people smoke with their children in their homes and their cars, but we can’t tell people how to bring up their children,” Councilor Julia Schloss said. “I also think it’s an imposition to ask our police department to deal with this issue.”
Councilor Ruth Eveland agreed, saying, “I cannot bring myself to make our police force try to enforce this.”
Councilor Rob Jordan said that since most visitors to Bar Harbor would have no way of knowing about a car smoking ban, they are the ones who would bear the brunt of enforcement. For a town with so many tourists, “that’s a PR problem,” he said
Mr. Paradis said he thought any prohibition against subjecting children to second-hand smoke in vehicles should be a state law, not a local ordinance. But Mr. Dobbs said the only way to get the legislature to consider such a law is for local communities to take the lead.
Responding to those who said the town has no business telling people they can’t smoke in their own cars, Mr. Dobbs said, “It is our business, and we have a chance to do something for a lot of people. I just can’t believe that, knowing what you know (about the health effects of secondhand smoke), you are not willing to take that grassroots step to protect that child or that young adult.”
Mr. Dobbs said he has not spoken to a single person who expressed opposition to the ordinance he proposed.
“I never dreamed that this would encounter resistance,” he said. “Some of the things I do are purely based on gut feeling of what is right and wrong, and this jumped in my face. I never intended it to become a media circus. I just thought it would go sailing through.”
Mr. Garland said he supported the car smoking ban because of all the scientific evidence about the harm that secondhand smoke does to children.”I would like to show that this body has learned something from the education money the state has reaped from the tobacco companies,” he said.
Mr. Dobbs said he would draft a petition for a town meeting vote on the ordinance he proposed. According to state law, such a petition would need the signatures of 10 percent of the number of Bar Harbor citizens who voted in the last gubernatorial election. Town Manager Dana Reed said he thought that number was about 2,430, which means Mr. Dobbs would need to get 243 registered voters to sign his petition.
If the signed petition isn’t submitted to the town clerk in time for the smoking ban question to be on the warrant for the town meeting in June, it likely would be voted on as part of the election in November. The council also has the option of holding a special town meeting on the issue.
Bar Harbor Considers Ban On Smoking In Cars With Minors
?
January 28, 2007
Matt Bush
?
January 28, 2007
Matt Bush
Bar Harbor’s close proximity to Bangor may influence a new law there. A law banning smoking in cars when minors under 18 are present will be discussed at Bar Harbor’s February 13th town meeting.
Town Council member Jeff Dobbs says he got the idea when he heard about Bangor’s newly adopted ordinance.
“Nothing against people who smoke, but I just don’t think it’s fair given the amount of information about second hand smoke that they should be smoking in cars with children who have no choice,” said Dobbs.
The resort is a destination for tens of thousands of worldwide tourists, but Bar Harbor is a lot smaller than Bangor, so news that it may ban smoking may not spread around the world as quickly.
Just last week, councilors in Veazie, which is just north of Bangor, decided against adopting a similar smoking ban.
