Asking Mayor Ron Belmont for Help
Smoking Addicts Don’t have a Right to Poison and Kill People Around Them

In April 2016, the West Harrison Neighborhood Association had a meeting with the town’s Mayor, Ron Belmont, mostly it seemed to complain about decreased sanitation/garbage service even with no reduced taxes. I just listened to that part as I’ve never much been involved in local politics, but after, and with all of an introvert’s trepidation, I asked the mayor if there was anything he could do about these smokers, who were polluting the entire neighborhood, as well as making my life the living hell that it had become.
He seemed willing to address the issue, and so I was hopeful. I assumed that no reasonable town would possibly allow someone to pollute the neighborhood’s air like this, or to expose other residents to anything like the toxic, lethal smoke that cigarettes and smoking them produces.
Not long after, he said he had come out to the area, and he thought the smell was mulch, which, he said, often smelled like that. Note, however, that he did agree there was a smell, and at the time, I had directed him to consider a house that was two streets (~1.5 standard blocks) away from the actual smoker. If I understood him correctly, he actually checked several times, as did his building inspector, Ed Debono.
I was glad he confirmed that he also smelled it, as I was still questioning whether the smell was a side-effect of the epilepsy, but my optimism was short-lived. Around the same time, I also got a call from one of the town inspectors, Code Enforcement Officer Ed DiBono, also saying that he thought the smell was mulch, and that I should just wait a few days for it to go away. I called back and left a message on his voicemail describing the history — that it had started in February 2015 and had thus been going on for more than a year at that point.
I got no response from Ed DiBono.
When calling to contact or leave a message for Mayor Belmont, however, I did wind up having a 10 minutes conversation with Kerry Morrano, without knowing who she was, that she was effectively a hostile lawyer, or the mayor’s “chief of staff.”(*)
This conversation has more substance to it than the final conversation with Mayor Belmont, as Kerry Morrano was the real decision maker here, and this was her attempt to push the issue entirely onto me and justify that Mayor Belmont has no responsibility for the neighborhood’s air quality.
The same day, a few hours after this conversation, I got a call from Mayor Belmont, saying that he couldn’t (wouldn’t) do anything about it.
