A new Ann Arbor law regulating smoking outside of public buildings and also potentially in areas of some city parks has been given final approval by the city council.
A pole for disposing of cigarette butts is placed outside the Ann Street entrance to Ann Arbor’s city hall building.
Smoking within a specified distance of certain locations is punishable under the new ordinance through a $25 civil fine. Those locations include: … [Full Story]
A vote on a new ordinance that would prohibit smoking in specific outdoor public areas in Ann Arbor has been postponed by the city council. Made punishable under the ordinance through a $50 civil fine would be smoking within 20 feet of: (1) bus stops; (2) entrances, windows and ventilation systems of the Blake Transit Center; and (3) entrances, windows and ventilation systems any city-owned building.
The city council action came at its Feb. 3, 2014 meeting. The council will take up the issue again at its March 3 meeting.
The ordinance would also authorize the city administrator to have signs posted designating certain parks or portions of parks as off limits for outdoor smoking, and to increase the distance from entrances to … [Full Story]
Editor’s Note: Eastern Michigan University first opened in 1853 as Michigan State Normal School, later becoming the Michigan State Normal College. In days gone by a “normal school” was a teacher training college. The inaugural edition of a new Chronicle column by David Erik Nelson describes his schoolteacher wife as a “greedy, terrible, pregnant, unionized public servant.” It makes one wonder how she would have fared among the women students at the normal school in the early 1920s. Laura Bien sketches a picture of their travails in this week’s edition of her local history column. [Full Story]
