Committee weighs capping standalone tobacco smoke shops at five; enforcement questions and moratorium extension discussed

At the License and Franchise Committee meeting, members discussed a proposed cap of five standalone tobacco smoke shops in the city and options for enforcing it.

"What we're looking at doing, I think the consensus of the committee, my understanding is we're looking at capping at 5, standalone tobacco smoke shops," the chair said during discussion. City staff, citing Director King, reported the city currently has nine standalone smoke shops.

Under the plan discussed, the city would reduce the number of standalone smoke shops by attrition: when a standalone shop closes and surrenders its license, the city would not issue new standalone licenses until the total drops to five. Committee members repeatedly emphasized that the cap would not apply to convenience stores or gas stations that sell tobacco as a secondary product.

Members debated whether to define a smoke shop by a qualitative "main focus" test or by a percentage-of-sales threshold. Several aldermen expressed concern that a percentage-based rule would require substantial monitoring of sales data and revenue reporting, potentially creating an administrative burden for the comptroller's office and for city staff.

Staff said the moratorium on new smoke-shop requests has been in place since July and that the administration could consider a temporary extension of the moratorium while the committee develops final ordinance language and enforcement procedures.

No ordinance was adopted at the meeting. Committee members directed staff to gather additional information on enforcement mechanisms, the comptroller's role in monitoring sales data, and examples from other jurisdictions; any moratorium extension or ordinance change would return to committee and then to the mayor and council.