Next Up at City Council 01/10-11/2007

The item most interesting to me on next week’s Portland City Council agenda will have a Public Hearing at 2 p.m. on Thursday, January 11.

Matt Grumm, Commissioner Saltzman’s parks liaison, says the new regulations their office proposed will cost $33,000 in new signage. I haven’t heard an estimate on enforcement costs, or even if any is planned. This ordinance is a follow-up from the one last month prohibiting smoking in Pioneer Courthouse Square and near play structures. It deals with other prohibited activities, like using a shot put or taser, presumably not with the same intent. It’s not clear whether there are major changes to the Exclusion clauses – please post in the comments if you know more about that, since the information available on the city’s web site is either scanty or hard to find.

Commissioner Leonard is proposing an amendment to ban smoking in all public parks, not just in Pioneer Courthouse Square and near playground equipment. Possibly excluding golf courses, although his comments on the item at Mercury Blogtown sound like he’s reconsidered that exemption.

I’ll never forget Gladys, a dear old woman I nursed as she drowned in her own secretions with liquid filling her lungs and gushing out of her mouth in end-stage smoking-related heart/lung disease. And I’m pretty sensitive to smoke in my space – it makes me wheeze, smarts under my contact lenses, and the smell gets stuck in my hair. But I’ve never been bothered by smoke in a park, and I question whether the government should be taking time to ban (and police?) something that is legal for adults to do, when there isn’t a clear public health issue involved. Getting smokers to use trash cans for their filters, which are toxic if ingested by children and animals and extremely gross for non-smokers to pick up, would satisfy me, along with banning smoking in parks during organized events like concerts.

I was interested to see the letter in The Oregonian earlier this week that claimed state law prohibits local jurisdictions from making anti-smoking laws more stringent than state regulations. No citation was given, and the only such reference I can find is in the Indoor Clean Air Act, which fittingly only applies indoors. So it seems to me the Council can enact a ban on smoking in all parks – the question is, should they?

Also of note on Wednesday’s Council agenda is the presence of Anton Vetterlein of Homestead and Don Baack of Hillsdale in two of the Citizen Communication slots. I’m pleased to see the policy adopted last year of allowing each citizen to take one of the five-per-week openings once a month is giving more people the opportunity to testify, instead of the same people showing up week after week. Anton and Don’s listed topic is “regarding proposed Aerial Tram operations and fare plan”. I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing they will talk about the fare for non-OHSU employees being $4 round trip, when one of the supposed benefits to the Homestead and South Portland neighborhoods was presented as providing better transit for residents. Since both Homestead and the neighborhood formerly known as Corbett-Terwilliger-Lair Hill have neighborhood parking permit programs already in place, it would seem an easy and appropriate fix to provide those with resident permits with free annual passes to use the tram. Or give a TriMet pass tram-upgrade sticker to all addresses in designated areas. Tri-Met is said to be decreasing bus service when the tram is fully operational, so those neighborhoods should be allowed to use the tram as part of the transit system.

As a footnote to Citizen Communications: Matt Grumm said last night at the SW Neighborhoods Parks committee that Commissioner Saltzman was very impressed with the presentations by Greg Schifsky and Micki Carrier on the need for better tree protection/planting regulations, and plans to follow up on their suggestions. Way to go, Greg and Micki!

Coming down the pike: Randy Leonard may propose a citywide ban on trans fat. Lots of good comments on Jack Bog’s blog post on the subject. I agree with Frank Dufay and others who suggest

a) we have more important priorities, and
b) we should require information to be posted, and leave it to citizens to make their own choices.

I also see total fat content as more important for health and avoiding obesity than trans fat. I’m feeling burned that we switched to margerine for many years, only to hear now that butter is better for us after all*. My grandfather died of appendicitis at 93 – his dietary motto was, “a little of what you fancy does you good”.