SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO.com) -- He didn't quite say it, but you could see looking and listening to Sioux Falls Mayor Mike Huether today that he's pleased with how the city's recent restrictions on tobacco on municipal property have been received.
He gathered his health director, parks director and healthy living coordinator beside the Carnegie Town Hall--with new non-smoking signs on the street lamps--and declared another of his "wins" for Sioux Falls.
Though neither he nor his staff could point to any statistics showing a decrease in smoking or tobacco use or a reduction in health care costs related to the same in the City, Huether and his crew said there have been few complaints about the ordinance enacted earlier this year.
Huether reminded assembled journalists and city employees that tobacco had killed his father and he would have liked to have gone farther with regulation, but that didn't happen--and isn't going to happen--at least any time soon--during his remining six months in office.
"But I'll cheer on the next mayor," Huether said. "I'll cheer on the next council. I'll cheer on the next govenor or whoever wants to make it tougher to light up or to chew."
With the city's golf courses in the news with a new concessionaire coming in to run the facilities in 2018, some of the rules for not smoking--or smoking--at Elmwood, Kuehn Park, and Prairie Green came up.
Parks director Don Kearney tried to explain the different rules for duffers who are puffers.
"Essentially once you've left the first tee (and are in play), either the first tee or the tenth tee," then smoking golfers can light up, Kearney said. But not around or in the club house, though the parking lot is ok, he noted.
Click here to read the City's explanation of how the anti-tobacco use ordinance on city property works.