Sudbury city councillors lit up debate on how to keep people from smoking in parks after city staff suggested a bylaw to discourage people from doing so.

At a meeting Monday night, Coun. Terry Kett slammed the proposal as confusing and hard to enforce.

"Instead of having all that gobbledy gook, we [can] just say ‘no smoking on municipal property’,” Kett said. “That we can enforce."

But other councillors were cool to the idea of a total ban on smoking in Sudbury parks.

Coun. Jacques Barbeau said that type of bylaw would truly be impossible to enforce.

“Imagine trying to enforce a no-smoking bylaw at our ball fields,” he said.

“Good luck … We're having very little success with the drinking.”

Barbeau said most smokers are responsible and the best way to limit second-hand smoke is an education campaign.

All of Sudbury city council will have the chance to debate the proposed parks bylaw at a meeting next month. Timmins has a similar bylaw that tells smokers they can't light up in parks frequented by children.

Ban midways from parks?

City staff has also recommended carnivals and midways no longer be allowed to set up in a public park.

Summerfest organizer Christopher Nerpin said that would cost his music festival $6,000 a year.

He said the plan says some troubling things about the city.

It appears “the city does not value Summerfest and what it brings, that it does not value volunteerism, that it is willing to risk permanently losing Summerfest and that Bell Park does not belong to all of Greater Sudbury,” Nerpin said.

City staff will study the issue of midways in municipal parks separately, but the rest of the proposed Sudbury parks bylaw will be debated and voted on by city council next month.