Officials Seek Grant to Tout Community as Smoke-Free : Health: Promotion campaign would seek to capitalize on benefits of the Southland’s strictest no-smoking ordinance.

City officials, who last year enacted the strictest no-smoking ordinance in Southern California, are hoping to launch a major promotion campaign touting Bellflower as a smoke-free city.

Bellflower officials have applied for a $400,000 grant from the state Department of Health Services to finance a marketing campaign aimed at attracting diners, shoppers and new businesses desiring a nonsmoking environment.

“We are very health conscious (and want to tell people) that they don’t have to be in an environment that deals with secondhand smoke,” said Councilman Bob Stone, who was the catalyst for the controversial no-smoking ordinance that was passed in January, 1991, and took effect two months later. The ordinance bans smoking in restaurants and most buildings with public access.

The city plans to use freeway billboards, local and regional newspapers, business journals, cable television and national restaurant trade magazines to publicize Bellflower’s nonsmoking ordinance and point out the health dangers of secondhand smoke.

Officials also hope to hand out buttons and bumper stickers, said Steve Hageman, a city administrative assistant who is handling the project.

Bellflower does not have money to finance the project on its own, officials said.

The city faces heavy competition for a state grant, however, according to Carol Motylewski, a consultant with the health service’s tobacco control section, which funds anti-smoking projects with money from the statewide cigarette tax, Proposition 99, approved by voters in 1988.

Motylewski said Bellflower is one of 291 cities, youth groups, nonprofit organizations and social service agencies that have applied for $15 million in grant money available this year. The requests total nearly $100 million.

Grants range between $50,000 and $400,000. Recipients will be announced by March 13.

Motylewski said the state weighs such factors as whether a proposal will change attitudes about smoking, whether it sets realistic goals and how it will contribute to the state’s goal of reducing smoking in California by 75% by 1999.

Hageman said he thinks Bellflower has a good chance of receiving a grant, although it may not be the full amount requested. “What we’re doing is in keeping with their philosophy. It would seem to be in the state’s interest to foster community programs that are enduring examples for other communities,” he said.

A second Southeast area city, Whittier, which enacted a smoking-control ordinance effective July 1, has applied for a $106,000 grant to help fund an anti-smoking community education program.

The Whittier ordinance will ban smoking in enclosed public places such as hotel lobbies, banks, stores and theaters. Restaurants must make 75% of their seating nonsmoking this year and eliminate smoking entirely in 1993. Other businesses must designate smoking areas.

Linda Creed, director of transit and public information services for Whittier, said the educational program, called “Breathe Easier Whittier,” will offer workshops and brochures for businesses and young people, and will encourage neighboring cities to enact similar smoking controls.

Since 1990, the state has given grants to 210 recipients, 46 of them in Los Angeles County, to finance proposals ranging from educational videos to smoking prevention education programs for minorities, pregnant women and recent immigrants.