CYPRESS : New Venue for Bingo Will Allow Smoking

Band and athletic team boosters for Cypress High School have found a new home for their fund-raising bingo games where bingo and smoking will be allowed to coexist.

The City Council on Monday night approved a conditional-use permit that will allow bingo games--formerly held at a local school--to be played in a now-vacant store in the Cinnamon Square Shopping Center, in the 61000 block of Ball Road.

About 50 parents and teachers who attended the council meeting broke into applause as the council unanimously approved the new bingo venue. School officials said Cypress High would have lost thousands of dollars in booster funds had a new bingo hall not been found.

That is because a federal law, which will take effect Dec. 26, forbids smoking in any school building, at any time, if the school receives federal funds.

The public school system in Cypress, like virtually all public schools in the nation, gets some federal funding.

Currently, the boosters hold their fund-raising bingo games at Lexington Junior High School. Spokesmen for the boosters said that many, if not most, bingo players are cigarette smokers and that the games would fail to draw participants if smokers were barred. The boosters thus appealed to the council to allow bingo games in a commercial building.