The Belmont, California City Council on Tuesday night adopted a landmark ordinance regulating secondhand smoke in the city.
even you, Fido! EPA/FRANZ-PETER TSCHAUNER
The ordinance passed on a 3-2 vote and will go into effect in 30 days, according to City Manager Jack Crist.
The ordinance was introduced by the City Council on Sept. 11, and then approved with a few wording changes at its Sept. 25 meeting.
The groundbreaking ordinance declares secondhand smoke a public nuisance and extends the city's current smoking ban to include multi-unit, multi-story residences.
Another town in California, Calabasas, also prides itself on being a smoke-free municipality, calling itself Clean Air Calabasas, a smoke-free city.
Last March, the council extended its smoking ban, which includes virtually all indoor public places, to include most open-air spaces as well. The only place you can smoke are in certain designated areas the town labeled as "smoker's outposts" or any outdoor public area in which "no non-smoker is present."
Private residences were not within the reach of the ban at the time. Until new legislation was introduced recently for consideration that mirrored Belmont's ban on smoking inside multi-unit residences.
Though Belmont and Calabasas already restrict smoking in multi-unit common areas, Belmont was the first city to extend secondhand smoke regulation to the inside of individual apartment units.
NBC11, the local television affiliate in San Francisco reports that smoking will still be allowed in single-family homes and their yards, and units and yards in apartment buildings, condominiums and townhouses that do not share any common floors or ceilings with other units.
The ban for multi-unit apartment buildings will not take effect for an additional 14 months after the ordinance is passed, so that one-year lease agreements will be unaffected.
Smoking will be permitted only in designated outdoor areas of multi-unit housing; it will not be allowed in indoor and outdoor workplaces, or in parks, stadiums, sports fields, trails and outdoor shopping areas.
Smoking on city streets and sidewalks will be permitted under the ordinance, except in the location of city-sponsored events or in close proximity to prohibited areas.
City officials have said that enforcement of the smoking ban will be complaint-driven.
The issue was first brought to the attention of the Belmont City Council last July, when residents at a senior housing complex complained of complications arising from secondhand smoke in their apartments.
Your Talkback on this Story