Posted on 05/21/2006 7:42:17 PM PDT by SheLion
BANGOR - A majority of Maine residents - 79 percent - are nonsmokers, a statistic provided by the Smoke-Free Coalition of Maine on Thursday to local policy-makers, tenants and landlords to get them involved in making their public and private housing facilities smoke-free.
The coalition's conference, attended by nearly 50 people, was designed to reduce the involuntary exposure of tenants to secondhand smoke, which can seep through ventilation systems, walls and electrical outlets. The coalition hosted a similar conference on Wednesday in Portland.
Twenty-eight percent of Maine's housing is renter occupied, Jim Bergman, keynote speaker and co-director of Smoke-Free Environments Law Project in Michigan, said. Bergman is a lawyer who has worked to define the rights of landlords and tenants, which includes a landlord's right to make a facility smoke-free.
"Smoking is not a problem a landlord can mitigate," Bergman said. "[Tenant] complaining always continues."
Smokers are not a protected group under Maine law or anti-discrimination laws, Bergman said, who offered numerous statistics. When a smoking tenant moves out, it costs a landlord $600 to $1,500 more to clean and repair a residence than when a nonsmoker leaves.
Sam Schors and Billie Jo Stanwood, managers with the Fickett Property Management which has rental units in Jonesport, Cherryfield and Columbia Falls, said they agreed with Bergman about the costs incurred with renters who smoke.
"The cost is far more to repair units after smokers move out, even when compared to pet owners," Schors of East Machias said. "You could spend up to $4,000 in carpet replacement just because of cigarette burn holes.
"One of the reasons we're here today is to see how we can transition to smoke-free housing."
The Smoke-Free Housing Coalition began in September 2003 with impromptu meetings motivated by a number of tenants who were frustrated by their exposure to secondhand smoke.
In fiscal year 2006, the Partnership for a Tobacco-Free Maine funded the coalition with a $35,000 grant to continue its efforts and marketing through events such as the conference, which was only the second of its kind in the nation.
The American Lung Association gave the state of Maine "straight A's" on its report card, the only perfect score in the nation, for its tobacco prevention and spending efforts, smoke-free air, cigarette tax and youth access laws.
Gov. John Baldacci, during his keynote address which kicked off the event, praised the coalition and the Partnership for a Tobacco-Free Maine for their work focused on prevention.
"We never had the opportunity in our state, because of tight times in economics, to fight for prevention; we were always trying to just plug holes and stop crises," the governor said. "There are now so many people working together under the same umbrella, landlords and tenants working together to protect children and tenants from secondhand smoke."
After his speech, Baldacci was presented with a green hard hat, designating him the "Top Construction Engineer for Smoke-Free Housing" in Maine.
The Mount Desert Island and Ellsworth Housing Authority is one of 16 housing authorities nationally to commit to the nonsmoking idea and today is expected to approve revisions officially making its Bar Harbor Housing Authority smoke-free, Linda Kelley, assistant director of the MDI-Ellsworth Housing Authority, said Thursday.
"We met very little resistance," Kelley said of the Bar Harbor tenants. "I was kind of surprised."
She said she hopes to have the four other authorities, Ellsworth, Southwest Harbor, Tremont and Mount Desert, smoke-free in at least two years.
???? Nope. Nor with a translator...
If I only read authors that agreed with me politically, I wouldn't have much to read.
As a former Delaware resident I am tickled pink about that exemption. For one reason and one reason only-----Denis McGlynn of Dover Downs who went to Trenton and lobbied against the exemption because he knows how badly it hurts the slots businesses in Delaware.
Well too bloody bad about poor Denis....he shouldn't have sold out on all the people that were working with him fighting the ban in Delaware.
I don't want to make a big thing out of it, because I don't rent apartments, and I am not in the market. My home has not been smoked in. I agree that soap and paint go a long way, but we may have to agree to disagree on how much smoke permeates the drywall, vents, etc. My parents were very heavy smokers, but both have long since quit (my father gave it up around 15 or so years ago, my mother gave it up when she died at 43 of lung cancer). My sister smokes, but I never took it up. To each his/her own. But you really don't have to be all that sensitive to smell when rooms have been smoked in over a long period of time. Smokers are naturally going to notice it less than non-smokers. I am not judging, just observing. And I believe that it is, or should be, the property owner's call on whether smoking ought to be allowed, whether in an apartment, bar or restaurant. Let the market run things, as it ultimately will.
I can understand why you feel that way.
And that is the gist of the problem - the anti-smokers refuse to permit that to occur.
Please don't get me wrong, I'm on the side of the bar/tavern/restaurant owners that fought the ban. I was just happy to see Denis get slapped after he bailed on us in Delaware.
What we went through in Delaware was down right ugly and Dover Downs was right there in the trenches with the local bars and taverns. The local restaurants had already sold out and so we didn't care about them anymore. But when Denis sold out in late 2003/early 2004...........
I was just commenting that politically he's the embodiment of the philosophy that's made Maine one of the poorest states in the country, his talent at story-telling notwithstanding.
Yours was the last post before FR went down for 3.5 hours- it is your fault that so much work got done this morning. I'd expect a 0.3% uptick in productivity for May.
It's a beautiful state, too. Too bad the commie statists have taken the reins.
I've had a similar effect before, but generally it's just a roomful of people that disappears.....
LOL!
"The landlord has the right to say yes or no to smoking. What is wrong with that concept?"
Absolutely nothing is wrong with the landlord making the call. Of course, that is probably the status quo today. Which makes me wonder why this article was even written or why the involvement of this "coalition."
Of course, it can't be part of any sort of propaganda to change from the status quo.....
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