City Will Keep Enforcing Ban on Political Posters

Political signs and posters will remain illegal in Cambridge, the City Council decided last night.

The council defeated 4-3 a moratorium on enforcement of the city's laws banning political advertising signs in residential and commercial districts.

A Middlesex Superior Court justice could overturn the council's actions Thursday, however. School committee candidate Alice Wolf filed suit last week seeking an injunction against enforcement of the sign ordinance, claiming it unconstitutionally denied freedom of speech to Cambridge residents.

Speaking in the cafeteria of Cambridge's Rindge and Latin High School, which was decorated with posters urging students to vote in upcoming senior class elections, City Councilor Alfred E. Velucci demanded an end to Cambridge's ban on political advertising.

"Many Cantabrigians have lived in countries where they were stripped of all their rights, so I can understand why people would jealously guard their constitutional rights," Vellucci said.

The anti-sign majority cited aesthetic and political conerns as reasons for their opposition.

"I find the signs personally distasteful, from a campaign and from an aesthetic point of view," City Councilor Mary Ellen Preusser said.

"Signs are stupid," City Councilor David A. Wylie added. "They convey less information than practically any other form of advertising." Wylie eventually voted for an end to the ban, however, saying that case law supported Wolf's claim that the ban was unconstitutional.

Wolf called the law an "interference with the political process and an abrogation of first amendment rights."