Cooperstown Crier
November 06, 2008
Village parks go tobacco free
Staff Report
The village board voted last month to make all village parks tobacco free.
The vote came after Parks Board chairman Jeff Katz recommended adoption to the full board during the monthly meeting. The new no smoking park rules take effect immediately.
Reality Check members Ryen Martinez, Aiden Macaluso, and brothers Tom and Chris Hogan made their case for the ban to the Parks Board earlier during its Oct. 16 meeting. The teens showed the board all the tobacco butts that were collected in local parks.
Martinez told the board that cigarette butts are the most littered item in the world.
``We even found cigars. It was disgusting,’’ Macaluso said.
The Parks Board agreed and voted to recommend adoption of the policy to the full board of trustees.
More than a dozen teens turned out for the park clean-up on a sunny Saturday in October. They started at Lakefront Park and fanned out to Council Rock, Pioneer Park, Fairy Springs Park and even paid a visit to the south trolley lot, where an excusion train from Milford regularly drops off passengers. The greatest number of tobacco butts was found at Lakefront Park, followed closely by tobacco trash picked up in Pioneer Park. By comparison, Fairy Springs Park yielded only a few tobacco butts, the teens said.
Other teens who participated included Julia Levendowski, Joseph Harmon, Peter Resnick, Quinn Bernegger, Matt Frevele, Elizabeth Kenison, Linda Kenison and Max Bonderoff. á The event was capped by a party at Lakefront Park. Marcia Kozubek, Otsego County Coordinator for Reality Check at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Otsego County, and Aletha Martinez, program director for Rural Three for Tobacco Free Communities at Bassett, were on hand to work with the youth and hand out t-shirts.
Kozubek and Martinez said tobacco-free parks are a growing trend, after U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona announced the results of a study showing second- hand smoke is deadly, resulting in more than 50,000 deaths annually. The study said outdoor smoke in parks and sidewalk cafes can cause asthma attacks in youngsters.
Last fall teens approached the City of Oneonta with a similar request. The City voted May 20 to create smoke-free zones at both Neahwa and Wilber Parks. |
