Hermosa Beach’s City Council tentatively approved an expanded smoking ban in the city’s outdoor areas at its Tuesday night meeting.
The ban would apply to all public outdoor areas, and private outdoor areas where the public is invited, such as businesses like Deep Pocket Jean Company, a Pier Avenue retailer and barber shop that in the past has permitted smoking on its patio. The council also clarified that the new code section would apply to e-cigarettes as well, and agreed to downgrade the penalty for violating the ordinance from a misdemeanor to an infraction.
Extending the ban to multi-unit housing, as neighboring Manhattan Beach has done, was not agendized, but did come up in public comment. At the direction of council, City Attorney Michael Jenkins said staff would return with information about the issue in several months.
The ban comes as the city has tried to limit the effects of smoking in its downtown areas, particularly Pier Plaza. The council banned smoking on the plaza in 2011, but many employees and patrons of local restaurants and taverns continued to smoke in the area. A stepped-up enforcement program of these laws began just before Memorial Day Weekend this year, but by that point city staff had begun to research a broader ban.
In making their decision, council members cited a recent forum in the city hosted by the Beach Cities Health District and the Surfrider Foundation for providing compelling information about risks of secondhand smoke. But they remained somewhat divided about another point that emerged at that gathering: the effect of designated smoking receptacles.
Councilman Jeff Duclos worried that not having ashtrays available for the occasional violator would lead to an increase in litter and beach pollution. But others cautioned that providing ashtrays or designated smoking areas confused people and made broader bans harder to enforce.
“The fact is that Manhattan Beach has none of those,” said Craig Cadwallader, head of Surfrider’s South Bay chapter. “Having those to deal with what should be rare exceptions is sending the wrong message.”
Edison grilled
Later in the meeting, council members sternly questioned representatives from Southern California Edison over recent blackouts and forthcoming plans that would impose rolling outages on the city.
In 2016, the typical duration of an outage in Hermosa was more than four times higher than Edison’s system-wide average. A Friday evening outage earlier this year took the whole night to resolve, and at the time several downtown businesses said they lost thousands of dollars in revenue.
In response, the utility has promised to add additional circuits to the “King Circuit” feeding Pier Avenue, which would create redundancy and likely limit the duration of outages downtown.
Additionally, because of the depleted availability of natural gas created by the leak and subsequent closure of the Aliso Canyon gas storage area near Porter Ranch earlier this year, Edison has warned Hermosa and other cities it serves that rolling outages are likely in the coming months. Customers will receive notice of the outages up to an hour in advance.
The utility noted that the outages are not within their control, but are instead imposed by the California Independent System Operator, which monitors California’s electrical grid. But some council members said that, by expanding its renewable energy portfolio, the Aliso Canyon closure would have been less likely to force outages in Edison’s coverage area.
“I’m not convinced Edison is doing everything it can,” said Mayor pro tem Justin Massey. “I am convinced that Edison is doing the bare minimum.”
