Sara Rubin here, thinking about one of the simple glories of local government meetings: Anyone gets to speak at the microphone and weigh in.
Sometimes, a public comment period can go off the rails, even when there are guardrails. As per usual, Salinas Mayor Dennis Donohue opened the public comment period on Tuesday, Oct. 13, with some guidelines: Each speaker has two minutes and must not make any threatening remarks toward others.
Things started out pretty normally after that. One speaker advocated for reducing pesticide use, another announced upcoming Veterans Day activities. Jose Guerra, a candidate for City Council District 2, had some choice words for the incumbent, Tony Barrera, and other incumbents: “Que vergüenza, you guys are embarrassing…You guys up there, you need to be replaced.”
This all is captured on video, creating a public record of the comments. It’s easy to hear on the City of Salinas’ YouTube channel, but the camera shows the speakers’ backs, rather than their faces—atypical.
At one point, while mayoral candidate Daniel Muñoz is standing in line, another mayoral candidate, Peter Szalai, can be seen whispering to him. Szalai says he was concerned about the camera direction because Muñoz and several supporters arrived wearing Muñoz for Mayor T-shirts. Back in March, after Szalai first announced his candidacy at the podium, he was called into a meeting with City Manager René Mendez, City Attorney Chris Callihan and City Clerk Patricia Soratos. In Szalai’s telling, they directed him not to use the public lectern for his campaign activity, with directions that he says included a prohibition on wearing political clothing. Muñoz had showed up on Tuesday with that in mind.
(I did not get the opportunity to ask Muñoz about this because he says he is boycotting the Weekly in light of the editorial board’s Yes on Measure H endorsement. More on this later but yes, this is a candidate for mayor who says he will no longer speak to anyone on our staff about any topic—including freedom of political expression at the podium, ironically—because he disagrees with an opinion piece.)
“I went to the meeting to watch the spectacle,” Szalai says. Instead, he became the spectacle.
He thought it was odd that the cameras were not showing the front of the Muñoz for Mayor T-shirts (so did I). But he took matters into his own hands, walking up to the IT control room and swinging the door open, seeming to startle the worker inside, he says.
In Szalai’s telling, the worker said the camera direction was not a glitch. (I’ve been unable to confirm with city staff whether they did direct the cameras to point away from the campaign T-shirts.)
The rest can be heard, not seen, because Szalai is offscreen, shouting, “This is not right, this is censorship!” (Worth noting: Nobody was instructed to remove or cover their clothing, as far as I know, and all speakers could still be heard clearly through the audio.)
Donohue started calling for the officer on duty, asking for Szalai to be escorted out of the meeting. But things calmed down, Szalai returned to his seat and public comment continued, back to speaker Gary Petersen advocating for more public restrooms downtown.
The camera was again trained on the speaker—Petersen, then Muñoz, then his supporters, then others—and the meeting went on.
Except for Petersen, it was nobody’s finest moment.