After months of discussion, the Cortez City Council has decided not to move forward with a policy that would create designated smoke-free areas on city property.
During a workshop on Tuesday, the council discussed the results of an unscientific, two-month online survey by the parks, recreation and forestry department that received more than 900 responses about whether they would support tobacco-free zones in city parks and other public places.
The council did not hold a vote.
In a previous workshop, parks and recreation director Dean Palmquist had discussed with the council the results of the survey and proposed a potential policy that would create a 50-foot smoke-free perimeter around all city-owned property, with signs to be paid for by his department. After studying the comments that were made on the survey more carefully, this time around they decided not to pursue such a policy, with several members saying smoking in the parks isn’t a big enough problem to justify the expense of signage.
Palmquist brought several maps showing proposed areas on city property where smoke-free signs could be installed, which he had created with the help of the advisory board. He also showed some proposals for designated smoking areas, another potential approach the council had discussed at the previous workshop.
Some council members were opposed to smoke-free zones entirely, like Orly Lucero, who said he was against any kind of no-smoking policy.
“Opening this kind of can of worms ... I don’t think it’s necessary at all,” he said.
Councilwoman Jill Carlson and city manager Shane Hale said they had received several complaints in the past from parents who didn’t want people smoking around their children’s sporting events. But they also noted that in the comments on the survey, many community residents had said they wanted the city to focus more on bigger problems, like drugs and alcohol in the parks.
About 54 percent of the survey responses said they’d been bothered by secondhand smoke in public places. Hale said he believed most smokers were “perceptive” about the problems with smoking in public. Mayor Pro Tem Ty Keel mentioned that, during the Broncos visit to Parque de Vida on April 21, he hadn’t seen anyone smoking even though an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 people were present.
“I think that’s a really good testament to the fact that people do police themselves,” Keel said. “I don’t think it’s that big of a problem.”
Although Palmquist didn’t give an estimate on how much the “smoke-free zone” signs would cost, Mayor Karen Sheek said that, since the community’s opinions on smoking seemed divided, she didn’t believe it would be worthwhile to spend any taxpayer money on the signage.
Ultimately the council decided not to draft a policy on smoke-free zones, although they did bring up the idea of possibly creating some smoke-friendly areas to encourage smokers to stay away from places where children were playing. Palmquist said he would consider adding more benches with ashtrays to certain parks, but that he would need to discuss the issue with the advisory board first.
Even though his department has been considering a smoke-free policy since November, Palmquist said he wasn’t discouraged by the council’s decision.
“If it ever becomes an issue again, we’ve got this groundwork laid,” he said. “I thought we had a really good discussion.”
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 threatened its validity, and the ability to make generalizations based on its results.
He added that there’s no way to know how many people responded more than once, which also threatened its validity.
