Alexandria
Chamber of Commerce
Policy Position - 2007
Issue:
City of Alexandria Proposed Smoke-Free Restaurant Act
Background: At
the request of the Mayor and City Council, on February 24,
2007, the City Attorney issued a memo and draft text amendment
to the Zoning Ordinance to ban smoking in Alexandria's bars
and restaurants through the Special Use Permit (SUP) process.
The proposed text amendment would cover all existing bars
and restaurants (whether grandfathered or under an SUP) and
all new bars and restaurants. All new bars and restaurants,
and those existing bars and restaurants covered by an SUP,
would be required to operate as smoke-free establishments
as a condition of their SUP. Grandfathered bars and restaurants
would have to agree to operate as smoke-free establishments
or lose their grandfathered status and become "nonconforming"
and subject to a seven year abatement period.
On April 4, 2007, the Mayor, City Attorney and Acting Director
of Planning and Zoning held a public meeting on the proposed
smoking ban to obtain feedback from the business community,
restaurateurs, and citizens regarding the proposed smoking
ban. On April 4, 2007, the General Assembly failed to adopt
the Governor's proposal to ban smoking in bars and restaurants
throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. On May 1, 2007, the
Alexandria Planning Commission recommended approval of the
proposed text amendment, as originally drafted with no revisions.
The May 12, 2007 City Council public hearing on the proposed
text amendment was deferred to the June 16th, 2007 public
hearing.
Position:
The Alexandria Chamber of Commerce does not support the use
of the SUP process to ban smoking.
The Alexandria
Chamber of Commerce believes that:
• In a survey of Chamber members, although a vast majority
of the respondents indicated that they are non-smokers, the
overwhelming response was that members of the Chamber of Commerce
do not support the use of the SUP process to regulate smoking
in Alexandria.
• The Commonwealth of Virginia is a Dillon Rule state.
Under the Dillon Rule, localities in Virginia can act only
if the General Assembly has expressly conferred the power
to act upon them by positive statutory grant or unless such
authority is necessarily implied from any expressly granted
powers. The City of Alexandria does not have the authority
to ban smoking and will be in violation of the Dillon Rule
if it adopts the proposed text amendment to do so.
• Any adoption of a text amendment by the City Council
to ban smoking, outside the grant of authority or proper implementation
by the General Assembly, will lead to costly litigation. Based
on the outcome of recent litigation involving other attempts
by the City to improperly expand its zoning authority, the
City will lose any such litigation and will waste limited
tax dollars that could otherwise be spent on more important
City needs including education, safety, and economic development
initiatives.
• The purpose of the SUP is to mitigate impacts of the
use, not to regulate personal behavior. The current SUP process
is already burdensome, overly restrictive and unpredictable.
The SUP process places Alexandria at an economic disadvantage
relative to other jurisdictions without such cumbersome restrictions
on bars and restaurants. The SUP process needs to be improved,
not further complicated by additional regulations associated
with the proposed smoking ban.
• The City already has a very successful non-smoking
initiative, "Proud to be Smoke Free," which has
over 100 voluntary bar and restaurant participants. The City
of Alexandria should focus on this initiative and consider
providing economic incentives to promote smoke-free establishments
instead of using regulatory disincentives to require such
changes.
Approved by The Alexandria Chamber of Commerce
Board of Directors on May 16, 2007
