Health District wants tobacco-free Sunbury parks

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Delaware Gen­eral Health Dis­trict Devel­op­ment Offi­cer Linda Dia­mond attended last Wednesday’s (Jan­u­ary 16) Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing to ask coun­cil mem­bers to make all vil­lage park and play­ground areas tobacco-free zones.

“We want tobacco free parks for our chil­dren in par­tic­u­lar; a place to go where peo­ple can be healthy,” Dia­mond said. “Chil­dren, pets and wildlife eas­ily get into dis­carded tobacco like cig­a­rette butts — it’s every­where, and hard to control.”

Dia­mond said two years ago New York City went to tobacco free parks and beaches.

“They put up signs and peo­ple are com­ply­ing with­out any prob­lem,” Dia­mond said. “There are 1,700 parks and 14 miles of pub­lic beaches in New York, and also pedes­trian plazas like Times Square, that are tobacco free.”

Dia­mond also noted that many Major League Base­ball, National Foot­ball League and col­lege foot­ball sta­di­ums are tobacco free. Closer to home in Delaware County, Dia­mond said Preser­va­tion Parks sites, Lib­erty Town­ship parks and fields, and Pow­ell play­grounds and shel­ters are all tobacco free zones.

“This isn’t to tell peo­ple not to smoke, just not to smoke in parks and near chil­dren,” Dia­mond said. “There’s harm from sec­ond­hand smoke, even in out­door spaces, and it’s impor­tant that chil­dren don’t see tobacco use and think it’s the norm.”

Dia­mond said tobacco lit­ter is haz­ardous to chil­dren and wildlife; that chil­dren can be poi­soned by the inges­tion of cig­a­rette butts. She noted that Amer­i­cans dis­card more than 175,000,000 pounds of cig­a­rette butts every year. Within an hour of con­tact with water cig­a­rette butts can begin leach­ing chem­i­cals such as cad­mium, lead and arsenic into the marine environment.

Dia­mond said the health dis­trict would design and pur­chase signs if the vil­lage leg­is­lates tobacco-free parks.

In other busi­ness, Coun­cil mem­ber Tom Zalewski said some­thing must be done about res­i­dents park­ing along vil­lage streets and espe­cially around Vil­lage Square dur­ing snow emergencies.

“They’re all around the square,” Zalewski said. “If they’re parked there dur­ing a snow emer­gency put a tag on him, take them to the dog pound. We’ve just got to start step­ping on somebody.”

Vil­lage solic­i­tor David Brehm said he thought there was good com­pli­ance when tem­po­rary signs were put up dur­ing snow removal.

“I want to look at a more for­mal res­o­lu­tion to park­ing dur­ing snow emer­gen­cies,” Brehm added. “I’d like to see some­thing with more teeth in the books.”

Coun­cil mem­bers approved Res­o­lu­tion 2012–18, a res­o­lu­tion in sup­port of the Big Wal­nut Water­shed Bal­anced Growth Plan that’s part of the Mid-Ohio Regional Plan­ning Commission’s Water­shed Plan­ning Partnership.

Coun­cil mem­bers approved Ordi­nance 2012–20 that would reduce resident’s over­due income tax inter­est to 8 per­cent; and approved Ordi­nance 2012–21, the annual agree­ment with the Regional Income Tax Author­ity, a.k.a. RITA.

Coun­cil mem­bers also approved Ordi­nance 2012–22, the ODNR fish­eries man­age­ment pro­gram at the vil­lages up-ground reservoirs.

Sun­bury Mayor Tommy Hat­field reminded every­one that the open coun­cil seat must be filled by the end of Jan­u­ary. He said he has one resume from an inter­ested can­di­date. If any­one is inter­ested in fill­ing the seat con­tact the vil­lage admin­is­tra­tion office for addi­tional information.

The next Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing will be at 7 p.m. on Wednes­day, Jan­u­ary 30, in third floor coun­cil cham­bers, Sun­bury Town Hall.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 23 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.