Boston youth speak to city council on harmful storefront advertising By Scott Wachtler, Bulletin Newspapers According to research compiled by the non-profit youth organization, Sociedad Latina, 75 percent of teens visit a convenience store at least once a week. Even before entering the store they are confronted with advertising for harmful and unhealthy products. Rafael Feliciano, Joanna Beatty and Kayla Olmo, youth community organizers from Sociedad Latina joined the standing room only crowd as they hosted a hearing in the Boston City Council chambers on the issue. Armed with a PowerPoint presentation and several large pictures of store windows jammed thick with so many cigarette, junk food and alcohol ads that it was impossible to see inside, they aimed to convince City Council members that these ads are harmful to the youth who see these ads on a daily basis. After surveying 180 stores throughout Boston, Sociedad Latina found that stores in low income communities such as Dorchester had more advertisements than those in wealthier communities like West Roxbury. "Fifty two percent of ads shown in windows are tobacco ads," Olmo said. "Sixty five percent of those are seen at the eye-level of kids. We saw an example of a cigarette ad next to a picture of Sponge Bob." Melissa Luna, Director of Community Organizing, said the youth have been working on various programs designed to educate youth on the dangers of smoking since 2003. Their latest work has broadened their scope to include the dangers of junk food and alcohol. "They noticed the correlation between these harmful ads and high obesity and cancer rates in low income neighborhoods," Luna said. The youth spoke to City Councilor Michael Ross, who sponsored the hearing, to come up with a way to solve the issues. They decided that that the best way to tackle the problem was through the enforcement of zoning codes. "The section that regulates signs is from the seventies," Olmo said. "We want the code rewritten to be more clear, and to be enforced." Jonathan Ondrejko of Roslindale was at the meeting to testify as well. Ondrejko is from the Healthy Roslindale Coalition. He said that Healthy Roslindale Coalition fully supports the work that Sociedad Latina has done. "The ad laws need to be enforced," Ondrejko said. "They especially need to be enforced around school zones where ads like these need to be limited." According to the Boston Sign Code, signs posted for more than 15 days can only be posted in windows provided that their total area does not exceed 30 percent of the window. Susan Rice, Assistant Commissioner of Plans and Zoning of the City of Boston Inspectional Services Department (ISD) agreed that the code is vague and that the examples shown show storefronts that are in violation of code. "What people have to remember is that ISD doesn’t go out patrolling looking for offenders. We work on an complaint basis," Rice said. Rice was open to having a discussion on the issue between City Council and the ISD. At-large City Councilor Sam Yoon asked if these signs could be banned based on content, but Rice was unsure about that. "We might run into constitutional issues if you base this on content," she said. Yoon wasn’t so sure. Offering that tobacco ads have been banned from television for years, and that this would be the same type of issue. Yoon received loud cheers and applauds from the youth in the chambers when he suggested that it might be worth researching whether Boston could be the first to call for a ban of harmful ads. Councilor Ross said it seems that there is a lot that the ISD can do now to regulate the ads by sending an inspector out to the stores that are in violation. Rice said that this could be done, but all they could do was ask the owner to cooperate and if they didn’t, it would mean that they would have to enforce it by a lengthy trip to housing board court. "I’m not sure we have a really big stick in this matter," Rice said. "But we’re willing to have a conversation on this." Ross ended the hearing by announcing that he will form a working group with the youth of the various organizations to meeting with ISD and indentify the 10 most egregious violators of the current code. He said he will also look to see what can be done to rewrite the existing code to make it clearer. "I look forward to working with the youth in the area on this," Ross said. "I’ve have nothing put positive experiences working these young people." PHOTO CAPTION: Rafael Feliciano, a youth community organizer from Sociedad Latina talks with At-large City Councilor Sam Yoon about the problem of storefront advertising that promotes an unhealty lifestyle.