During the council’s workshop, they heard a presentation from the Youth Leadership Council of Montezuma-Cortez High School on secondhand smoke, and reviewed the results of the unscientific online survey with parks and recreation director Dean Palmquist. Although Palmquist’s department has recommended installing a 50-foot smoke-free perimeter around city property, based on the survey results, the council did not vote on the issue Tuesday. Instead, they made plans to draft their own version of the policy, to be discussed at a later meeting.
“This is one of those kind of controversial issues,” Palmquist said. “In the survey results and the comments, you’ll see that people are either very strongly for it or very strongly against it.”
Derek Kosty, a senior academic research analyst at Fort Lewis College, said the fact that only 11 percent of the population responded to the survey threatens its validity, and the ability to make generalizations based on its results.
“It is unclear whether those 11 percent are representative of the larger population,” he said.
He added that there’s no way to know how many people responded more than once, which also threatens its validity.
Palmquist said more than 900 people responded to the survey from early January until March 17. Respondents were allowed to vote on as many devices as they could access, though only once from each device. For example, one person could vote four times by using a smartphone, an iPad, a laptop and a desktop computer. Also, Cortez has a population of about 8,500 people, which the survey targeted, though it did not exclude out-of-state participants who might have found the survey through either the city or Journal website.
The survey gave three options for city policy: make a 50-foot smoke-free perimeter around all city-owned property; make all city-owned open spaces 100 percent smoke free and only allow smoking in parking lots; ban smoking anywhere near city parks, including parking lots. The most popular option was the first, Palmquist said, with 624 respondents saying they would “support” or “strongly support” a policy that created a 50-foot smoke-free perimeter.
The survey also asked respondents whether they had ever been bothered by secondhand smoke in city parks. A slight majority, just above 54 percent, said “yes.” The four M-CHS students who attended the city council workshop spoke about the various health hazards of secondhand smoke, such as an increased risk of lung cancer in adults and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in babies. They asked a volunteer, Mayor Pro Tem Ty Keel, to do jumping jacks while breathing through a straw to demonstrate the effects of breathing in smoke.
“I just picked up the habit of smoking straws,” Keel joked at the end of the workshop. “I’m hooked now.”
The council members spent much of the workshop discussing the pros and cons of a smoke-free policy like the one suggested by the parks department. City Manager Shane Hale said he would support a smoke-free zone around playgrounds and city buildings, but it might be harder to enforce around soccer fields and other open-air recreation areas. Council members Shauna McLaughlin and Jill Carlson suggested creating designated smoking areas near those places.
Hale proposed that the council work on several different scenarios for a smoke-free policy and narrow them down at a later workshop, with input from Palmquist.
“This is a big enough decision where I want to make sure council’s had plenty of time to talk about it,” he said.
The rest of the council agreed, but didn’t schedule a date for the discussion.