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March 14, 2010

Anonymous Glasgow Daily Times The Glasgow Daily Times Sun Mar 14, 2010, 12:16 PM CDT

GLASGOW — Last week in our community was a great week for participatory government. Citizens who have long sought to ban smoking in Glasgow places where the public can gather, such as restaurants and the like, were able, through persistence and the democratic process, to get the first reading of a smoking ban ordinance passed.

We were happy to see both groups — those in favor of the ordinance and those opposed — at Monday night’s Glasgow City Council meeting expressing in a civilized manner their views on the ordinance.

After debate, the council voted on the first reading and the 12 members were split on the ordinance. It was left to Mayor Darrell Pickett to break the tie in favor of the ban. He did so after a speech on how he had made a promise to his doctor that he would support the ban and on how he believed smoking by members of his family had robbed him of time with them.

He and the council members who voted “yes” made the right call to support banning smoking in Glasgow. The ordinance should be passed on second reading so that our community can come in line with other, more progressive communities that long ago accepted the medical facts of second-hand smoke.

The second reading of another contentious ordinance did pass, again with the tie-breaking vote of Pickett. And again, it was the right move to pass the ordinance that removed benefits for council members and did not give them a raise.

The initial writing of the ordinance would have removed benefits and given council members a nearly $4,000 dollar-a-year raise. But the ordinance was passed without the raise after it was amended by council member Rhonda Trautman.

Certainly, many citizens of Glasgow must have expressed their displeasure with the initial reading of the ordinance and some members of the council heard those expressions and voted accordingly.

There is no doubt the citizens of Glasgow raised their voices and the desires of those voices were heard and acted upon by the elected members of the community.

It was indeed a good week for participatory Democracy in our community.

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