The Mayfield City Council has passed the first reading of a city-wide smoking ban ordinance with a 6-4 vote. Mayor Teresa Cantrell says yesterday’s vote is the first step to ban smoking in public places like restaurants and other businesses.
“We’ve been working on this for a little over a year and we did a community poll and it was overwhelmingly in support,” she says.
However, she says there are still some critics of the smoking ban.
“The opposition for the most part was that they didn’t think that government needed to come in and make that rule that it should be the individual businesses making it. But at the same time we had individual businesses saying we would like for you all to do it so it will be even across the board. Because if we do it then they’re just going to leave and go to another smoking restaurant,” Cantrell says.
To take effect the ordinance would need to pass a second reading, which is set for the council’s July 8th meeting. Under the ordinance, fines for someone smoking in a prohibited place begin at $50 and fines for establishments violating the ordinance can be as high as $250.
