Total smoking ban voted down (Updated)
According to this Chronicle story, Council has voted down the tougher smoking ban and is now contemplating the mayor's proposed version:
Houston City Council today rejected a proposal to ban all smoking in restaurants, and took up Mayor Bill White's compromise proposal to ban lighting up in restaurants but not restaurant bars.
The 10-3 vote, with two members absent, was on a proposal by Council Members Shelley Sekula-Gibbs and Gordon Quan, who offered it as a compromise on their earlier measure to ban smoking in all restaurants and free-standing bars.
The story also has a bit more on the impact a total ban might have had on the city's convention business:
Jordy Tollett, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau, said the city would lose the annual convention of the Retail Tobacco Dealers of America in July 2007 if the council passed a total ban. The convention would pump as much as $10 million into the local economy and fill as many as 12,000 hotel rooms, he said.
"We're not a No. 1 tourist destination," he told the council's Neighborhoods, Housing and Redevelopment Committee earlier this week. "We're fighting for every convention we can ... A total ban is going to cause us hardships. It's economics for me."
Tollett said the city also could lose other prominent conventions under such a ban because convention organizers sometimes want the option of providing separate smoking areas for those who attend.
[snip]
Tollett said a complete smoking ban likely would dissuade a small percentage of conventions from coming to Houston. But he said this could still hurt the city's hopes to double its convention business in the wake of renovations to the George R. Brown Convention Center and the opening of the city-owned Hilton Americas-Houston convention center hotel.
Sekula-Gibbs told Tollett that a complete smoking ban would bring four conventions to the city for every one that would be lost. Tollett disagreed, saying he would support a total ban if that were true.
UPDATE: Council has now approved Mayor White's plan that bans smoking in dining areas of restaurants, but allows it in bars.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 03/09/05 11:49 AM | Print |
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