(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2023)
Many supoorters of the BLM Saratoga group wore T-shirts chastizing Commissioner of PUblic Safety James Montagnino. Tracy Krosky-Sangare said the commissioner was using his power to stifle people. "This is out-of-control," she said. "He's out-of-control."
Mayor Ron Kim’s new organization of the bi-weekly Saratoga Springs City Council meetings may have worked. The changes he made, and he outlined them at the start of the meeting, offered people four minutes to speak, and the council would listen for a total of 30 minutes, he said, adding that at the end of the meeting, people would have another 30 minutes, if they stuck around and wanted to speak then.
It was a modification of a plan he had first proposed on Feb. 21, as a way to allow people to speak their minds but also allow the meeting to progress, he said. The changes came after the city council closed their meeting Feb. 7 when Chandler Hickenbottom of Saratoga Black Lives Matter did not relinquish the microphone during the public comment period.
Kim proposed major changes Feb. 21 and then pulled them back last week.
[Read more about the changes here.]
As the meeting moved forward, the mayor let the first round of public speaking go on for a little over the 30 minutes, and people largely honored their times, some taking a few minutes over their four minutes, some taking a few minutes under.
And when the mayor signaled that the final person of the first round was at the microphone, no one fought him on it.
Asked if this was a better organization for the meetings, Kristen Dart said: “Oh 100 percent.”
“The mayor in the majority of cases is trying to do the right thing,” Dart added. “I think from a structural perspective he was trying to do the right thing.”
Dart is a local activist and chair of the Citizen Review Board that has been empaneled to oversee the actions of the police department. The mayor nominated her to that post.
James Montagnino, the Commissioner of Public Safety, agreed that the new way seemed to work. The police department is housed in his office.
“I’m fine with what we had here tonight. People spoke their peace. It was spirited. People said what was on their minds…The meeting wasn’t gaveled to an end without business having been transacted. This is the way the sausage is supposed to get made,” he said.
It might have been the only thing that Dart and Montagnino agreed on Tuesday evening.
About an hour earlier, Dart and Montagnino clashed verbally, and loudly, when another man, Sam Brewer, asked about the sewer and water rates.
Commissioner of Public Works Jason Golub was asking the board to accept the new rates as posted, when Brewer interrupted the meeting to ask what the new rates were and how much higher they were than last year.
Although the mayor, Golub, and Commissioner of Finance Minita Sanghvi reminded Brewer that the meeting had started with a public hearing on the matter, and he should have asked questions then, Brewer pushed for answers, and when the mayor allowed Golub to answer, Dart stood up.
She wanted to know why the city council was allowing a white man to ask questions and get answers while disrupting a meeting. She argued that Hickenbottom disrupted the meeting and had to appear in court because of it. Montagnino had initiated a summons for her to appear in court for disorderly conduct, a petty offense much like a speeding ticket.
[Read about the city council's reaction to the summons here.]
“No!” Montagnino responded, his voice rising, “for shutting down the meeting. For shutting down the meeting.”
“You all shut down the meeting,” Dart yelled. “That’s a vote by the council. It’s b-llsh-t. It’s just utter b-llsh-t! Why?”
“If you don’t know the answer to that, I can’t explain it to you,” Montagnino replied.
Dart pushed back: “Why? I want to know the answer. Is the answer that you’re a racist, and a black woman is intimidating to you?”
Montagnino began: “The city council was shut down February 7 and there were important things that needed to be done, that didn’t get done” — Dart interjected: “That was a choice made by this council.” — “As a result of the actions of the defendant [Hickenbottom], the reason for which I filed the complaint. No one was arrested.”
“But she appeared in court for something that this council did. Do you want to argue about the semantics?” Dart asked.
“I want to argue the truth,” Montganino shouted back. “So don’t misspeak.”
This was not the first time Tuesday evening that Montagnino faced charges of racism and for using his power as the Commissioner of Public Safety to silence Black people who wanted to speak.
During the public comment time period, people, Black and white, some members of the Saratoga Black Lives Matter group, others not, shouted at him and called him names.
Mostly, the statements were reactions to the summons issued to Hickenbottom, who was arraigned earlier in the day and pleaded not guilty.
People highlighted the idea that although the summons is similar to a ticket, it comes with costs such as time off work and lawyer fees. Others said he was making the issue about him and his hurt feelings.
Others said that people need to be able to speak truth to power and that commissioners need to listen and be respectful. They reminded Montagnino that the First Amendment allows difficult, sometimes loud and vulgar, speech.
Former city school board member Heather Reynolds said she had to make a difficult vote about concealed carry guns and retired police officers on school grounds. She added that she sat through hours of public hearings on the matter.
“I was told I had the blood of children on my hands,” Reynolds said to Montaganino in particular. “I owed it to people to listen…and I learned a lot from it.”
FoothillsBusinessDaily.com asked Montagnino after the meeting if he would change anything in his actions given all that was said.
He responded: “Quite frankly, we got our business done. People said what they had to say, they didn’t shut down the meeting. I think there might be some understanding that there is a line beyond which free speech ends and the breakdown of democracy begins.”
Sidebar: BLM Saratoga has been arguing since Feb. 7 that the city has not moved quickly enough to install the changes to the city's policing approved by the former city council in 2021. Dart explained that point number 35 of the 50 points requires the city council to report annually on significant progress made. No reports have been issued. Montagnino and others said they would issue a report.