Heated comments directed at Traverse City commissioners have renewed a debate about balancing free speech with safety and harassment concerns – particularly as the city prepares to launch a new public forum on social media.

Several elected officials have expressed feeling threatened by comments made in recent weeks by residents while reviewing a controversial proposal by Safe Harbor of Grand Traverse to open an emergency homeless shelter at 517 Wellington Street. At a November 17 meeting, a Boardman Neighborhood homeowner told commissioners: “If (my granddaughter) walks around the block, if this thing goes through, and she doesn't come back, I'm coming after you five.” He then proceeded to name five commissioners who supported Safe Harbor's proposal, including Jim Carruthers, Gary Howe, Tim Werner, Ross Richardson and Jeanine Easterday.

At another city meeting concerning Safe Harbor on October 20, a resident angrily addressed the commission, saying: “People are at the point where the only way to deal with you is violence. And that's probably how it's going to be sorted out. I would be thrilled...if I opened up the front page (of the paper) and saw that some of you guys got bashed seriously.”

City Clerk Benjamin Marentette says that comments containing physical threats or “fighting words” that could incite others to violence, such as those above, are among the few types of speech the city can restrict. The others are profanity and obscenity. When comments cross those lines, Marentette or Mayor Michael Estes typically first issue a warning to the speaker that their comments are out of order (as Marentette did on October 20); in more serious cases, the city can recess the meeting until the speaker leaves or is removed.

Commissioners and city staff also have the right to request a police presence at meetings, and can pursue a personal protection order (PPO) against someone in extreme cases of threatening behavior. But the city has little recourse otherwise to ban individuals from meetings or even to moderate their remarks. “We ask that everyone be respectful, but we can't demand it,” says Marentette. “The city's going to be very careful about when we shut down public comment.”

Those same rules apply to city forums hosted on social media sites – an issue that came to the forefront last week during discussion of a soon-to-be-launched city Facebook page. Commissioners Carruthers and Easterday requested city staff monitor the page for “nasty comments” and “bullying” remarks, with Easterday saying she didn't want “to see (personal attacks) in social media.”

“We would not accept this if it was a high school,” Easterday says. “And yet we accept this in our city government. It's not acceptable. To me, it's bullying.”

But City Attorney Lauren Trible-Laucht warned commissioners that “the problem we're going to have is censoring individuals (who've) not reached the line that's been set by the courts.” Trible-Laucht tells The Ticker that if name-calling or personal attacks don't reach those levels, “the city isn't going to remove (those comments) and can't really remove them.” Doing so could open the city to a lawsuit for violation of First Amendment rights, she says, just as it could in city meetings.

While Estes agrees commissioners have been “severely chastised” in recent weeks, he also contends “it is the right of the public to chastise” elected officials. The mayor says he believes “calls for censorship are generally calls to stifle public discussion and to shut out alternative points of view.”

“I've been called a murderer over the fluoride issue,” Estes says, citing a recent example of criticism against him. “(But) I fear calls for censorship far more than...any comments that I heard.”

Marentette, who notes city staff will still be able to monitor Facebook for explicit, threatening or otherwise prohibited content, says he believes the “vast majority” of public interaction with the city tends to be productive and will continue to be so. “I always hope people recognize that elected officials are real people, and use compassion addressing them and talking about them,” he says. “But we have an obligation to uphold people's freedom of speech rights. We have to take the good with the bad.”