Details of smoking ban to be discussed

Owners of restaurants, bars and other businesses unsure of how to enforce the Jan. 9 smoking ban could soon have an answer.

At its meeting tonight, the City Council could approve a Health Department plan that spells out how complaints by residents will be handled and how police, fire and health department officials will monitor compliance by individual businesses.

In October, the council approved a measure that will ban smoking in restaurants, bars and other establishments open to the public. However, customers will be able to smoke in outdoor patios as long as those smoking sections don’t require workers or patrons to cross through them to access a nonsmoking area or a bathroom.

Some Columbia business owners complained that they didn’t know how the ban would be enforced. Health Department Director Stephanie Browning’s report outlines how the Health Department would do just that.

The first step is finding establishments where smoking is taking place illegally. Columbians who see smoking in bars and restaurants should complain to a hot line set up by Health Department, which will be monitored and maintained by the department’s Environmental Health Division. The Health Department plans to distribute signs to businesses informing them of the ban and the hot line.

Once a complaint is received, officials from the Environmental Health Department will follow up with an informal inspection of the establishment, looking for obvious signs of smoking, such as ashtrays or odor.

If there are repeated complaints, the enforcement plan would authorize an unannounced, joint inspection by the Health Department and Columbia Police, which could lead to a warning or a summons. Browning said a summons would only occur with an establishment with multiple infractions.

Browning said she didn’t know how exactly residents would respond to the ban or the hot line.

“It’s hard to say,” she said. “People generally are law-abiding. I have a feeling people are going to comply.”

Nina Sturtevant, a manager at Columbia’s Boone Tavern and Restaurant, said she doesn’t expect many customers to try to smoke illegally after Jan. 9.

“I think that it’s not going to be a problem for us,” Sturtevant said. Although she said Boone Tavern didn’t yet have an official plan for dealing with such smokers, she said she had some in mind as the ban nears.

“We’ll probably have a little bit of a training session,” she said.

The Health Department’s complaint hot line is 874-7339.