If at first you don’t succeed try again is the mantra adopted by the Irving City Council who is set to vote tonight on new laws that would ban smoking in parks, game halls and restaurants that still have smoking sections.
Over the last few months the City Council has debated and attempted to rewrite the smoking laws since last year when it postponed a vote.
During a meeting yesterday the council got in a heated debate that would also ban smoking in all public building. According to council member, John Danish who referred to the proposal as an ambush on restaurant and hotel owners who will lose their smoking sections, “All of them are going to have their political ox and economic ox gored tomorrow night”.
Other council members are strongly supporting the ban which was recumbent by the city’s health board and it drew comments from the mayor who compared Irving with Los Angeles and other cities in the United States who have flourished with smoking bans.
Irving, Texas is home to 228,000 residents over 67.7 square miles and was founded in 1903.
Update 12/11/14: The Irving City Council has voted to delay the vote until January after the Mayor Ben Van Duyne was unable to stop the will of members from postponing the vote. According to the Mayon, “We will see this again”. No date has been set for the new hearing.
