ESCONDIDO -- With the City Council slated Wednesday to consider a ban on smoking in Escondido parks, a community activist has called on Councilman Sam Abed to remove himself from the debate because Abed owns a gas station that sells cigarettes.

"It's a pretty big conflict of interest for him to sell cigarettes all day and then vote against banning them from parks," said Danny Perez, a longtime community activist in Escondido.

But Abed, a longtime opponent of smoking bans, said Monday that there is no conflict of interest because cigarette sales make up less than 2 percent of the $10,000 in gross revenue his Mobil service station generates on a typical day.

City Attorney Jeff Epp agreed.

"As I understand it, they are a very minor part of his business," Epp said Monday. "And from a legal perspective, it's going to be really tough to say that a ban on smoking in parks is going to affect tobacco sales at his gas station."

Epp said the issue would be less clear if Abed owned a business where cigarette sales were the primary generator of revenue.

Epp said he had not conducted much research on the issue and had not contacted the state's Fair Political Practices Commission. The commission did not return calls from the North County Times by Monday's press deadline.

Abed said he might abstain from Wednesday's vote to appease Perez. His vote is not likely to carry much weight anyway, because three members of the five-member council have said they plan to support a ban. Those members are Mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler, Dick Daniels and Olga Diaz.

Perez said he wants Abed to go a step beyond abstaining and recuse himself from the entire discussion so he can't lobby his colleagues to "water down" the new legislation.

City officials plan to present the council with three options Wednesday -- do nothing; adopt a comprehensive smoking ban for all city parks and trails; or restrict smoking to designated areas of city parks and trails.

Abed recently softened his stance on the smoking ban, suggesting that he might support the "designated areas" approach.

"Mr. Abed is very intelligent, and he may manipulate the situation to get a partial ban instead of a complete ban," Perez said.

Abed said he planned to participate in the debate and tell his colleagues that a complete smoking ban was "feel-good" legislation that would be "too heavy-handed" to deal with the problem.

Escondido is one of the last cities in San Diego County to allow smoking in its parks. Of the county's 18 cities, only Escondido, Vista and Santee still allow smoking in parks.

Abed previously joined with Councilwoman Marie Waldron and former Councilman Ed Gallo to reject such a ban, contending that the rights of smokers should trump concerns about second-hand smoke, toddlers swallowing discarded cigarette butts and careless smokers igniting wildfires.

But prospects for a ban improved dramatically when city voters chose to replace Gallo with Diaz in November.

Momentum in favor of a ban began with the Vista Community Clinic's "Smoke Free North County" project. Children working on the project collected more than 26,000 cigarette butts in city parks last fall, and they presented a bag full of the butts to the council in December.

Dannah Hosford, coordinator of the project, said Monday that she was pleased the council appears ready to adopt a ban.

Hosford said leaders of the project had not taken a stand on Abed's possible conflict of interest. But she said they would strongly prefer a complete ban over a partial ban.

"A total ban is more effective than a partial ban because people tend to disregard the designated areas," Hosford said.

Having designated areas would also increase the cost of signs and installation of cigarette receptacles in the designated areas of each park, she said.

City officials are recommending a complete ban for those reasons, and because designated areas tend to encourage loitering in parks by some smokers.

In addition, Epp said designated areas would be more difficult to enforce than a complete ban.

The ban would cost the city roughly $800 because Hosford and her volunteers have agreed to cover $1,000 of the $1,800 required for 100 signs that would alert hikers and park visitors to the ban.

City officials said such signs would be crucial to getting people to comply with the ban because there are no plans to have police or other city employees enforce it.

Call staff writer David Garrick at 760-740-5468.