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An ordinance heavily restricting smoking in Pleasanton for multifamily residential buildings passed with unanimous approval by the Pleasanton City Council on Tuesday, albeit with some modifications.
Mayor Karla Brown called the ordinance “a major step forward” before voting during the council meeting.
“We’re proposing smoking restrictions where they do not exist right now,” Brown said. “That’s the reason why I supported bringing this ordinance forward.”
Aiming “to address health impacts of secondhand smoke,” the ordinance applies to multifamily residences with three or more connected units, including townhomes, condominiums and triplexes.
Smoking will be banned “at indoor or outdoor common areas such as hallways, lobbies, community rooms, playgrounds, and parking lots,” along with private outdoor areas including balconies, decks or patios, but will not apply inside individual units unless stated in a rental lease agreement.
Similar ordinances already exist in Danville, which bans smoking in ownership units and common areas, and San Ramon, where smoking is prohibited “in private outdoor areas and common areas of ownership projects,” while Dublin and Livermore have unrestricted smoking for ownership units. Smoking in multifamily rental apartments as well as certain public places, including parks and recreational facilities, is already prohibited in Pleasanton.
While the council agreed about the health effects of secondhand smoke, the issue of enforcing the ordinance generated a good deal of discussion that evening.
Councilmember Valerie Arkin asked about the success of enforcing similar ordinances already in place.
“We don’t actually see what’s going on; but for good or for bad, with everyone having a video camera, sometimes staff has a situation where a neighbor comes and shows us film where they say, ‘This is obviously my neighbor smoking, and they’re not supposed to,'” said deputy city attorney Larissa Seto.
Seto explained the on-site property manager is first contacted and notified about receiving complaints from smoking, and that follow-up information is then requested. “Those are the kinds of things, and we’ll bring it up with the management company also,” Seto said.
When asked if that method has been successful, Seto said, “I would say we have a few that are repeat offenders, and maybe that’s just the nature of addiction to tobacco.”
Seto added, “We also do have a lot of people that understand this is the rule and that they start to find different ways to use tobacco,” including walking around their complex rather than staying inside their unit to smoke.
During the public hearing, tenants rights attorney Henrissa Bassey for Oakland-based nonprofit Centro Legal de la Raza said the ordinance could have unintended consequences for low-income and minority residents.
According to Bassey, “Black and brown tenants face a higher amount of behavioral complaints than their counterparts, even in units in which the other tenants are behaving similarly. We are concerned that if the other tenants know they can bring their own suit against others, we will see an uptick in complaints against Black and brown community members.”
Instead of a $100 administrative fine that “is steep for many low-income community members and will actually work to reduce their income for purposes of paying rent,” Bassey suggested that “people could be given the option to attend a smoking cessation program or a hotline.”
“In that instance, nonpayment of rent would then be the basis for an eviction suit, and could actually serve as a barrier to tenants remaining in affordable housing,” Bassey said. The council ultimately agreed to issue a warning for first-time violators, then monetary fines for subsequent violations.
Councilmember Jack Balch said he “could not imagine encouraging people to video their neighbor on their balcony violating this ordinance as a basis for a private party suit,” as was originally proposed in the ordinance.
“Thinking of what we’ve done as a council with mental health, smoking is an addiction and if we treated it like a health issue versus an inconvenience to the nonsmokers in the room, we might have a different opinion on it,” Balch said.
Bay East Association of Realtors spokesman David Stark said, “The ordinance as proposed raises some very practical questions about the mechanics of how it will be implemented.”
“If you’re expecting property owners to enforce this ordinance, why was there no outreach to them?” Stark said. “I’m not referring to HOAs but actual condo or townhome owners. No town halls, no workshops; were any of the 4,000 rental property owners on your mailing list notified?”
Stark added, “This is really an important issue and there are stakeholders beyond the HOAs who need to be part of the conversation. This just doesn’t feel like the Pleasanton way of developing important public policy.”
Vice Mayor Julie Testa said she was “so unbelievably disappointed that we’re putting property and minutia over the health and safety of our residents.”
“We as a council took a strong position on vaping,” Testa said. “We took businesses, we took their products off the shelf because we understood the serious health impacts.”
Testa added, “This is as real a health-and-safety issue as anything we’ve confronted, and to give the rights to the smoker as opposed to give the rights to the nonsmoker, the vulnerable, the seniors, the children, the people with health issues, it’s not consistent with what we’ve done in the past with vaping and other issues that we recognized as a serious public health issue.”
Because city staff including code enforcement and PPD will handle enforcement, along with landlords and homeowners associations, no financial impact from the ordinance is expected. The ordinance will go into effect on July 1.
