Free Talk Live

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Smokers have just one message for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council members: butt out of our business.

“We’re outside. We should have freedom to smoke,” City Hall Park smoker Harvey Forbes told CBS 2’s Magee Hickey.

By a vote of 36 to 11 on Wednesday the City Council approved a bill to ban smoking in all city parks, beaches and pedestrian plazas.

Two Boston city councilors are proposing to ban smoking in public parks and beaches, carrying the decadeslong campaign to reduce tobacco use to some of the last remaining public spaces where lighting up is still allowed.

The Geneseo Village Board has passed a law that makes it illegal to smoke in public parks or in the village parking lot.

The law was approved just last week at a village board meeting. Smokers will not be allowed to light up at all four of the village parks, that includes Highland Park, which village officials say is almost always busy with people and sports.

Smoking will also be banned in the Downtown Municipal Parking lot, even if you're smoking in your car.

The fines won't be cheap, they go all the way up to $250.

The Bread of Life Mission, which has served the homeless community in Pioneer Square for more than 70 years, said the city has directed them to stop feeding the hungry in downtown parks. (audio with the article)

Fitness classes in Santa Monica parks have other park users are complaining about fitness enthusiasts not only blocking pedestrian walkways but also making too much noise. So the City Council is considering requiring that fitness trainers pay an annual $100 fee and turn over 15 percent of their gross revenues to the city, as well as requiring CPR training, insurance, and limiting class size; notwithstanding that trainers already pay the city for business licenses and for police-issued permits.

The Alameda City Council has approved a new ordinance that aims to protect people from secondhand smoke by effectively banning smoking in all outdoor public places.

Smokers could run afoul of the new law -- most of which will go into effect Jan. 1 -- if they light up at a bus stop, ATM or even on a balcony of a multiunit rental complex.

"nstead of declaring bankruptcy, Maywood officials decided to outsource all city functions. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department will patrol the streets, while the neighboring city of Bell will cover other city functions, such as staffing City Hall.

Maywood already relies on contract workers and outsources many city services. The director of parks and recreation, for instance, is a contractor, and the city's lights, landscaping and street sweeping are handled by private companies. Los Angeles County maintains the library and fire department."

Los Angeles parks and libraries could soon be soda-free. - When Councilman Mitch Englander discovered that his daughter was unable to buy anything but sugar-packed sodas in a city park vending machine, he introduced a motion to ban them. Englander pitched his proposed soda ban at parks and libraries to the city's Arts, Parks, Health & Aging Committee on Tuesday, CBS reports. The council member, who serves as president of the local chapter of the American Diabetes Association, talked about how sugary sodas increase rates of childhood obesity and diabetes.

SFO banned electronic cigarettes earlier this month and now the city is in the first stages of banning them. The plan is to fold them into the current smoking ordinance, saying that anything that looks, feels or functions like a cigarette is a cigarette and has to be banned from public places.