Council smokes out details

CITY HALL — A time-tested and unavoidable adage accompanied the City Council's second reading Tuesday of an ordinance banning outdoor smoking in parts of Burbank: The devil is in the details.

The ordinance on the table, which was set to be finalized Tuesday, would prohibit smoking in several areas in Burbank, including parts of downtown, public outdoor restaurant dining areas and the Chandler Bikeway.

The council had not yet voted as of press time, but city staffers were on deck to lay out the ramifications of putting the ordinance into effect, which would, in some cases, present a complicated set of variables.

"When you look at how you start to implement the ordinance and how the implementation will affect each individual business, the differences are pretty drastic," Assistant City Manager Mike Flad said.

The council last week decided to require a 5-foot buffer zone between smokers and pedestrian areas in outdoor dining areas, which was a 15-foot reduction from the ordinance requirements as proposed. But that could create a wide variety of scenarios for where smokers can and cannot smoke, depending on the layout of each individual business — especially in regard to where to set up designated smoking areas, Principal City Planner Michael Forbes said.

"We've been looking at the different restaurants, focusing on the downtown area, but looking at other areas," he said. "And since different restaurants have very different configurations for their patio areas … how this plays out in terms of practicality will be very different from restaurant to restaurant."

Implementing the ordinance at some eateries on San Fernando Boulevard, for instance, may prove to be problematic because they have front-side patios that are in close proximity to pedestrian pathways, he said. In some cases that would mean the patio would have to be removed completely, he said.

On the other hand, some backside patios would leave plenty of room for designated smoking areas and from pedestrian pathways, he said. And a place like the Burbank Bar and Grill, which has a second-story patio, would not be required to have a buffer zone at all.

Clarifying the precise definition of what qualifies as a pedestrian walkway was among the chief objectives of the council on Tuesday.

QUESTION

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