In a split decision, the Garland City Council updated its smoking ordinance Tuesday night by banning smoking in all public restaurants. However, instead of approving a comprehensive, citywide smoke-free plan as proposed a month ago, council members exempted the city's handful of private clubs.

"We are in many respects talking about bringing Garland a little bit out of the Stone Age," council member Rich Aubin said before the 6-3 vote. "We are the only city in the metroplex that permits smoking in restaurants from the ones we surveyed. We need to get with the times."

But Mayor Douglas Athas, who voted with council members Jerry Nickerson and Robert John Smith against the change, said that the current ordinance had served Garland well and that being like other cities was of no concern.

"I do not smoke. I do not like being around smoke," the mayor said. "But on the other side of it, as long as I can go places where I am not personally required to breathe other people's smoke, then my liberties have not been challenged."

A steady stream of club owners and smokers had gone to City Hall to protest a comprehensive change in the city's smoking ordinance. Restaurant owners, however, did not voice opposition.

Most restaurants decided to go smoke-free when Garland last revised its ordinance in 2006. Others were allowed to provide a smoking area. And a few, as businesses grandfathered in when the 2006 changes took effect, opted to do nothing at all. At a couple of Garland restaurants, smokers and nonsmokers still dine side-by-side.

Places that serve food and were built in Garland after 2006 are all smoke-free.

In addition to the handful of bars, VFWs and other clubs where smoking is allowed, bingo halls and golf courses are exempt from the upgraded ordinance.

On Wednesday, the Smoke-Free Texas coalition issued a statement saying that the city had missed an opportunity.

"The city of Garland has failed in its task to protect public health and safety by exempting bingo halls and leaving a loophole for bars," said the coalition's statement, shared by the American Cancer Society Action Network. "There are 94 Texas cities, including Fort Worth and Arlington, with comprehensive smoke-free ordinances that include their bars."