(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2023)
(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2023)
The Saratoga Springs City Council adjourned three times and came back to order twice Tuesday evening Feb. 7, all within 100 minutes and during the first order of business, the public comment period, a raucous debate over the advocacy that this city council has shown the African American community.
In that time, the council made two decisions. One was to hold an open, public meeting with the Black Lives Matter Saratoga group and the other was to pass the consent agenda.
The public comment generally covered either the topic of homelessness that has been at the center of debates in the city and on social media or issues that Black Lives Matter Saratoga activists brought up in a press conference last week.
Most people seemed to come down on the side of more compassion and more understanding.
One man talked about being seriously attacked by a homeless man, though this drew condemnation from the crowd yelling that it was fear-mongering homeless people.
Catholic schools superintendent for the Albany Diocese Giovanni Vergiglio, Jr., said the schools still wanted to work with the city to find answers to the homelessness issues facing the city. This drew some calls from the crowd saying that the schools should have worked more with the city before Shelters of Saratoga pulled out of a plan to move a low barrier homeless shelter into a building near the Saratoga Central Catholic School.
A number of people spoke about being homeless themselves, though they did not suffer from mental illness and had jobs while living out of their cars or elsewhere. They were trying to remove some stigma from homelessness.
[Read about the Shelters story here.]
Black Lives Matter Saratoga member Chandler Hickenbottom came to the microphone and told the board that on the whole they had done little to advance the agenda of the BLM Saratoga group, despite the help that BLMS gave during the elections to the city council.
She said that commissioners were not showing up to events and were not advocating enough for the needs of the Black community.
“You did nothing with the power you currently have,” she said. It was a refrain from the press conference last week in which BLMS leader Lexis Figuereo said too few of the 50-point list developed by the Saratoga Springs Police Reform Task Force in 2021 had been accomplished.
That press conference itself had been a response to the killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tenn., by Memphis police officers, and activists on the steps of Saratoga Springs’ City Hall asked where the support from the city council was.
“Where have you been for this entire movement? Show up!” Hickenbottem said at one point to the crowd and council, especially white people.
[Read about the BLM Saratoga press conference here and about BLM Saratoga activity generally here.]
Both Figuereo and Hickenbottom focused on the first point of the 50, a point that asks the police department to acknowledge and apologize for past troubles.
Hickenbottom spoke past the allotted two minutes. Kim asked her to give the microphone to the next person, but she refused. About 20 mostly white people left when it was clear she would not step down after many minutes of talking.
The first adjournment of the meeting occurred at this point, but tensions remained high and voices loud in the Music Hall of City Hall where the meeting took place.
The police officer on hand during the meeting was seen making a phone call and a few minutes later four more police officers were in the room.
Mayor Kim left the dais and quickly asked the police to step back out of the room.
When the meeting was tabled back to order, Kim agreed to hold a public meeting with BLMS, but the board had to wait for Commissioner of Public Safety James Montagnino to re-enter the room. He could be heard asking if holding a public meeting would be wise given that it would mean possibly being forced to hold public meetings with other groups.
In the end the meeting was approved to be scheduled for a later date.
At this point, the meeting moved forward one small step to the time where the council is allowed to react to public comment.
Commissioner of Public Works, Jason Golub, the first Black person on the Springs’ council in history, challenged some of the notion that the council was not “showing up.”
“I wrote the 50 points,” he said. He was the co-chair of the Police Reform Task Force with Camille Daniels. “That’s how I showed up.”
He encouraged the BLMS group to see that there are other ways for people to be active.
“I advocate and work for change,” Golub said, but “I’m not screaming your way.”
Hickenbottom said that was not enough and the advocacy had to be visible.
Montagnino attempted to speak, saying that what happened in Memphis was the act of a gang in police clothing, but when he attempted to say the Saratoga Springs Police Department is not like that, he was shouted down.
Kim could not get the meeting back on track, and they adjourned again, shortly thereafter. At that point, Kim said they would look for a future date to hold the rest of the meeting.
Commissioner of Finance Minita Sanghvi, an Indian-American, said after the that money has been budgeted for training and for body cameras, and the board was ready to name people to the Police oversight Civilian Review Board, all of which are mentioned in the 50-point list.
The board members all said they would be ready with their nominations to the police oversight Civilian Review Board for the Tuesday evening meeting, but the meeting did not make it that far. The item was up for discussion as the second item on the mayor’s portion of the agenda.
The CRB was approved last May, but delays in implementation have persisted. Kim has said that Reverend Michael Bell was the first person appointed to chair the CRB but he had to back out. Kristen Dart has taken the reins in his stead.
“To say we’re not doing anything is not right,” Sanghvi said. “It just takes time.”
After the meeting had been voted closed a second time, about 8:40 p.m., and mayor Ron Kim said they would find another time to hold the city council meeting, Kim called the meeting back into order, though this reporter and another did not hear it. The microphones for recording purposes were still on and people at home, if they were still watching, could see and hear it.
It was the second time that evening that Kim moved to close and then reopen the meeting. During the first, he both banged the gavel and spoke clearly into the room’s sound system microphone to call the meeting back into order.
After the second, quieter, reopening, the five board members huddled together at one end of the tables where they met to quickly pass the consent agenda which includes payroll, warrants and budget transfers.
Board members and their deputies said all they were doing was making sure city staff got paid.
“We have to pay people,” the mayor said.