BY FRAIDY REISS
Correspondent
Armed with a tape measure, four library employees hovered last month outside the Monmouth County Library Headquarters in Manalapan.
They were not planning for a library expansion or security enhancements; they simply were trying to figure out where they will be allowed to stand during their cigarette breaks after a ban on smoking within 25 feet of entrances to all Monmouth County buildings goes into effect May 1.
“It’s not bad,” one of the employees, principal clerk Michele Mummel, concluded. “We just have to move over a little.”
Still, she said the outdoor smoking ban was “not the greatest thing.”
“I don’t fully agree with it,” she said, “but I’m willing to [comply] out of respect for everyone else.”
The outdoor smoking ban, which was adopted April 11 by the county Board of Freeholders, calls for a $200 fine for smokers who light up within 25 feet of access points to all buildings owned and leased by the county. Those buildings include 74 county facilities, ranging from the police academy in Freehold Township to the Mosquito Extermination Commission in Tinton Falls, as well as Brookdale Community College and park system facilities.
Also included in the ban are specific restrictions that limit where smoking is allowed outside the Monmouth County Courthouse in Freehold, beyond the 25-foot buffer, and a provision that prohibits smoking “in areas where signs are posted” beyond the buffer.
So far, the county has no plans to designate outdoor non-smoking areas beyond the 25-foot buffers for any building other than the courthouse, said David Medeiros, operations manager for the department of buildings and grounds.
However, that might change in the weeks after the ban goes into effect, he said.
“I’m waiting to see where [smokers] will congregate outside the 25 feet,” he said. “If everyone moves from the doorway and stands on the sidewalk, it solves nothing.”
Specifics of a statewide ban on smoking in most indoor public places and workplaces, which became effective April 15, will not be finalized until June, but one proposed rule includes a 25-foot buffer between smokers and non-smoking areas. If that proposed rule becomes state law, a smoker who took a puff outside a Monmouth County building would be violating both state and county law.
County spokesman Bill Heine said it was “unlikely” such a violator would be cited twice – for breaking state law and for breaking county law – but it could happen.
“You could conceivably get two summonses,” Heine said.
Throughout the state, two other counties, Burlington and Sussex, have passed similar bans on smoking near county buildings, said Ruth Boorujy, assistant to New Jersey GASP (Group Against Smoking Pollution). Also seven towns, none of them in Monmouth County, have adopted similar measures, she said.
Monmouth County attorney Malcolm Carton has said the idea for the county’s ban on smoking near entrances to its buildings came from state Superior Court Judge Lawrence Lawson, who sits in Freehold. Both Carton and Lawson were not available for comment.
The ban is intended to protect nonsmokers from inhaling secondhand smoke as they enter county buildings, Freeholder Director William C. Barham said.
“We, as freeholders, have a responsibility to protect all the people of Monmouth County,” he said.