Thumbnail photo by Amanda Dockter
Crescent City Harbor commissioners hadn’t gotten that far in their agenda last Tuesday when Board President Gerhard Weber asked a public commenter to leave.
The commenter, Alicia Williams, had stepped up to the podium a second time seeking to rebut statements a previous speaker had made concerning invocations at public meetings. She refused to step down after Weber reminded her multiple times that she had already spoken.
Weber wound up telling Williams to leave, saying she was disrupting the meeting.
“I’m very sorry for your personal circumstances,” the Harbor District Board president told Williams, who said her mother had just died. “But the rules are the rules.”
Weber and his colleagues later approved a code of conduct governing public comments during their meetings. They also agreed to post them in the Harbor District meeting room for the public’s edification.
In addition to recommending a code of conduct, the “Practical Guidelines for Managing Public Forums” included in the agenda packet addressed the use of profanity and obscenity as well as personal threats or attacks and hateful and demeaning language based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender or disability.
The proposed code of conduct also stated that a rule against yelling and screaming could be enforced, which, according to Commissioner Annie Nehmer, means you could be kicked out for “yelling and screaming during the meeting or [for] threatening behavior.”
Linda Sutter, another frequent public participant, pushed back, asking Nehmer to define yelling and screaming.
“I can raise my voice; you can’t kick me out for my speech,” Sutter said. “But you’re not defining that, so that’s why I’m asking: What’s the definition?”
Commissioner Dan Schmidt, who had proposed the code of conduct governing public participation on Dec. 17 in response to comments Sutter made regarding a proposed contract with Community System Solutions on Dec. 3, suggested she consult the dictionary.
On Tuesday, without mentioning Sutter by name, Schmidt told his colleagues that the guidelines were in response to comments someone made that “invaded the privacy of a private person.” He asked his colleagues to include a statement in the proposed public speaking guidelines discouraging such comments.
Schmidt also suggested decreasing the amount of time a member of the public can speak from three minutes to two minutes.
““The chairman has demonstrated here a liberal willingness to extend the time so people can speak longer than their allotted two minutes or three minutes,” he said. “I look at the clock, and generally it’s closer to two minutes rather than three minutes, so I think we should limit it to two and grant a little extra time if somebody needs it.”
Nehmer said that the proposed code of conduct, and the minutes allotted to each public speaker, is discretionary.
“It’s really just more about presenting yourself at the dais and not using profanity if possible and behaving at the meeting in a professional manner,” she said.
Her colleague John Evans said that while he’d be willing to adopt a set of guidelines for public speaking, he wouldn’t want to “even dip a toe in the water of restricting somebody’s right to free speech.”
He also added that many requests in the code of conduct weren’t enforceable.
Weber echoed that concern, stating that the sentence in the guidelines referring to excessive profanity or slander suggests that a little bit is OK.
“I have to make that call of what is excessive — does it hurt somebody if the person is in the room and gets hurt if something negative is being said that’s not true?” He said. “I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with this, but I promise you I’ll do my best.”
