Bar Harbor man circulates smoking-ban petition

BAR HARBOR – Jeff Dobbs is busy making good on a promise he made to his fellow Town Council members last week.

He’s collecting signatures on a petition for an ordinance that would ban smoking in cars when children are present.

Dobbs had brought the proposal to the Bar Harbor Town Council, thinking that the town should take a stand for children’s health by adopting an ordinance similar to one adopted in Bangor earlier this year. The concept is a no-brainer, Dobbs has said, because it’s clear that secondhand smoke can have dire health consequences for people, especially children.

But the rest of the council didn’t share his enthusiasm. When time came for a vote, only Councilor Robert Garland cast his with Dobbs.

The remaining five voted against the ideas for a variety of reasons. Some said the issue was better left to the state. Others said they had concerns about civil liberties and about giving the Police Department more work to do.

Dobbs, however, was undeterred. He said that if the council rejected his proposal, he would go around it by getting enough local voter signatures to have the proposal placed directly on the warrant for annual town meeting.

By Thursday, Dobbs said he had collected about 80 percent of the signatures he needs.

“As of right now, pretty close to 200, I think,” he said. “People are calling up now to come down and sign it.”

He said he has to collect at least 234 signatures, which is 10 percent of the number of local voters who cast ballots in the most recent gubernatorial election. He said he believes he could get a lot more, but that his goal is to collect 250 before he turns it in to the town clerk. He wants to have enough in case some signatures turn out not to be valid, he said, but not too many that the clerk has to verify a lot of unnecessary signatures.

Dobbs said he had received one phone call from a resident who is upset by the proposal but that most comments he has heard have been supportive.

He hopes to collect enough signatures so he can bring the petition back to the council at its April 3 meeting, so it can consider the proposal again. If council members turn it down a second time, he said, it would go to voters at the town’s regular annual town meeting on Tuesday, June 5.

It is the third petition Dobbs has spearheaded in the 15 years he has been a councilor. He led a successful petition drive in 1983 to keep a tourism information buildings from being built in Agamont Park and in 1989 successfully petitioned to end the town’s yearlong experiment to allow only eastbound traffic on Cottage Street.

Dobbs said Thursday that the health information he has been provided since he first proposed the smoking ban has convinced him he is doing the right thing. He said he hopes that if enough towns take action the Legislature will step in to create a statewide ban.

“It just seemed like a good thing to do when I started,” he said. “Now I know we have to do it.”