HOLMES BEACH – Commissioners are looking at two ordinances to help combat litter and the negative environmental impacts it brings.
The first ordinance would prohibit smoking on the beach and in city parks. The ban would not apply to city parking lots.
Beach and park visitors would not be allowed to smoke any filtered cigarettes while on those properties. City Attorney Erica Augello said that commissioners cannot regulate the smoking of unfiltered cigars.
Reasons for the proposed ordinance include an issue of public health from secondhand smoke and the butts of cigarettes left on the beach that pollute the environment and can endanger wildlife if they make it into the water or are ingested.
Commissioner Carol Soustek, a smoker, said she isn’t in favor of the ordinance because she feels like it’s taking choices away from the public and would be hard to enforce.
“I don’t want to become a police state,” she said. “I don’t want to regulate everything.”
As a 20-year volunteer with Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring, she said that most of what she saw on the beach was plastic, not cigarette butts.
Commissioner Pat Morton disagreed.
“I don’t want other people’s secondhand smoke,” he said, adding that it’s offensive when you’re not a smoker and that he doesn’t think it’s right for non-smokers to have to pick up and move on the beach when someone lights up around them.
Police Chief Bill Tokajer said that Holmes Beach police officers don’t see a lot of smokers on the beach, but they do get some complaints about smoking in public areas.
The ordinance is moving to a first reading at an unspecified future commission meeting.
Last straw?
The second ordinance being considered is one banning the sale and distribution of plastic straws.
Before that ordinance moves forward, commissioners instructed the city’s code compliance officers to get input from local businesses on how it would impact their business, what viable alternatives to plastic straws are available and how long it would take them to make the change.
Augello said that plastic straws are the only single-use plastic that commissioners are allowed to regulate.
