04-25-2012 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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Joel Hanson From: Katie Engman [tobaccoke @yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 4:13 PM To: Joel Hanson; Kathy Glanzer Subject: Participation in North Suburban Tobacco Compliance Project Hello Joel & Kathy: I am writing to follow up about Little Canada's participation in the North Suburban Tobacco Compliance Project ( NSTCP). The Sheriff's Department, encouraged me to reach out to Little Canada to see if you wanted to re -join the project. Little Canada is currently the only city that contracts with the sheriff's department that does not participate in NSTCP. NSTCI? offers law enforcement, decision makers, vendors and communities a proven and comprehensive method to ensure that youth don't have access to tobacco. All youth buyers are trained, follow a specific protocol, and are professional and continually receive feedback after each time they assist. Each student also receives a gift certificate to reimburse them for their time or verification of service hours completed. NSTCP holds two scheduled tobacco vendor trainings per year open. These trainings are open to all vendors in participating cities. 1 am also available to provide onsite vendor trainings when requested and have done this multiple times. This allows for all employees to be present at the training, individualized attention and also offers flexibility to the vendors After the tobacco compliance check is completed, a certificate is sent by NSTCP to notify vendor management that the store has passed a tobacco compliance check. This saves time for law enforcement, as they do not need to go in after each check and notify the vendor. All tobacco compliance cheek results are tracked to create a longitudinal look at trends. Each city receives their results so they can identify problems, and celebrate their success in reducing youth access to tobacco. All results are communicated to city, county and state elected officials. 1 know that years ago Little Canada discontinued participating in the program due to the city budget's being very tight. State law does allows for cities to charge a tobacco license fee large enough to cover all enforcement and administrative costs. The only limitation is that the fee should not exceed the direct and indirect costs in issuing the license and policing the licensed activities. The fee for participation in the North Suburban Tobacco Compliance Project could fall under this category. The project continues to receive a grant from the Association for. Nonsmokers- MN to offset each city's cost to participate in the program. In 2011, the cost was $51.00 per vendor. The cost of the program is based on the number of vendors in the pool. and divided out on a per vendor ratio. We would welcome Little Canada back to the Project. It was wonderful working with you on updating the ordinances, and look forward to the potential of furthering our. partnership. Thank you for your. consideration. Katie 2