Smoking in Elgin parks — except on the golf courses — will become a thing of the past if a group of Elgin teens have their way.
About 12 of the 120 kids involved in Elgin’s Youth Leadership Academy made a presentation at the last Elgin City Council committee-of-the-whole meeting, asking the council to ban smoking and “vaping” in all parks except for the three golf courses.
The Youth Leadership Academy is an independent 501(c)3 group affiliated with Elgin Community College with the goal of making low-income youth ready and willing to go to college. Every year it selects about 25 seventh-graders to begin the six-year program. The students meet twice a month on Saturdays to be mentored in leadership and academics. Members who successfully complete the program get two years of free tuition at Elgin Community College.
Students can join the group from any of the school districts that feed into Elgin Community College — Elgin District U46, Algonquin-based Unit District 300, Burlington Central District 301 and St. Charles District 303.
Dianha Ortega-Ehreth, the group’s executive director, said Friday that each academy student is required to do some kind of service project as part of a Youth Leadership Academy team working with a local service organization. For example, one group worked on housing needs with the help of the Neighborhood Housing Service of Elgin. Another worked on the problem of homelessness with the help of the Elgin Public Action to Deliver Shelter organization. And, aided by a $3,500 grant from the Illinois Department of Public Health, one group was assigned to address the issue of smoking and health with the help of Kane County Health Department worker Jordan Morris.
Ortega-Ehreth said the group did a survey of people’s attitudes about public smoking and then decided to lobby for a ban on smoking in Elgin and St. Charles parks.
During the Martin Luther King Day of Service at The Centre of Elgin they also told visitors about the dangers of second-hand smoke.
Finally, they brought their case to the Elgin City Council with a presentation by Elgin High School freshman Joseph Madrid, South Elgin High freshman Sergio Perez and Abbott Middle School eighth-grader Xochitl Gomez.
Madrid told how his sister, who is allergic to smoke, became ill while she and he were walking past a couple who were smoking in a park.
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Gomez said one of the people who responded to their survey said that when she sits down to watch her child play a sports game, she often has to move because someone else sitting in the bleacher is smoking and she’s very sensitive to that.
Madrid said pets, wildlife and even children also can become ill by eating cigarette butts discarded on the ground. He said 86.4 percent of Kane County residents do not smoke.
No city council members said they oppose the teens’ proposal. Councilman Richard Dunne asked the city staff to have the Elgin Parks and Recreation Board draft a no-smoking-in-the-parks ordinance, for consideration by the council.
However, Ortega-Ehreth said the students will ask that smoking continue to be allowed on the city’s three golf courses. She said they decided on that exception after speaking with officials in the city parks department, who fear that there is such a close connection between smoking cigars and playing their game in many golfers’ minds that the city officials fear a ban there could drive away business.
For more about the Youth Leadership Academy, see http://www.ylaecc.org.