The Austin City Council will try to pass an e-cigarette moratorium at its upcoming public meeting at 5:30 p.m. Monday inside City Council Chambers. The key word there is try.

The measure likely won’t pass at Monday’s meeting as the council needs to unanimously approve an ordinance on its first reading. At least one council member has already decided to vote against a moratorium.

“I don’t think we need to be working on that at the local level,” Council Member Michael Jordal said.

The council was split on its decision at a March 3 work session to bring the moratorium ordinance to a vote, as Jordal, Jeff Austin and Jeremy Carolan argued against the need for e-cigarette and hookah ordinances. Mayor Tom Stiehm ultimately voted in favor of the issue so absent Council Member Judy Enright could give input on an e-cigarette ban in public places, similar to the regulations for tobacco use under the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act.

Jordal opposes the moratorium for several reasons. State legislators are already discussing e-cigarettes this session and could add e-cigarettes into the Clean Indoor Air Act. Then again, e-cigarettes have been marketed as a device to help people quit smoking, which Jordal believes could prove beneficial to many in the community. Jordal, Austin and Carolan all agreed at the last council meeting that residents should have the right to use e-cigarettes wherever they please, as the device doesn’t emit smoke like other tobacco products.

E-cigarettes have been on the market for about five years and haven’t undergone thorough testing by the Food and Drug Administration. They are filled with an unknown amount of nicotine and other chemicals, which are heated to produce a vapor inhaled through the e-cigarette.

While e-cigarettes are technically considered a tobacco product and therefore are illegal for minors to purchase, there’s often little regulation on where or how they can be sold, or the nicotine bottles that come with them, according to county health officials and a member of the American Lung Association who gave a presentation on e-cigarettes to the council last month.

“The facts aren’t all out yet, but I think that it will be determined in the long run that e-cigarettes are much better for people than other cigarettes,” Jordal said at the last work session.

Stiehm and Council Members Janet Anderson and Steve King disagreed at the time.

“We don’t know all the facts yet,” Anderson said on March 3.

The council will likely decide the issue at its April 7 meeting.

E-cigarettes aren’t the only thing on the council agenda, however. Council members will set goals and priorities for 2014, discuss upcoming street reconstruction projects and decide what to do after hearing from residents about the city’s rental housing issues at a public forum Saturday, March 8.