Clearwater council suspends open public comment to quell YouTube ‘circus’

CLEARWATER — Members of the public will not be allowed to address the City Council about topics not on the agenda for the next three months to reset what Mayor Bruce Rector said “has become a circus” due to disruptions by YouTube activists.

For much of the past year, Port St. Lucie resident Michael Taylor has attended meetings to lodge complaints about the police, city staff and council spending for his monetized YouTube channel. While his camera rolled, he’s yelled profanities, extended his middle fingers and refused to leave after being told he was in violation of council rules.

In June, he stepped to the lectern wearing a bullet proof vest packed with ammunition and started his remarks with: “Yeah, this is not gonna be pretty right now.”

The council voted 4-1 Monday to suspend the citizens-to-be-heard portion of meetings until October. Council members said the online videos have incited threats of rape and violence against city officials and caused residents and staff to fear attending meetings.

The Tampa Bay Times requested copies of the threats, but city spokesperson Joelle Castelli said they are part of an active law enforcement investigation and could not be released.

The council considered a resolution to limit public comment to Pinellas County residents instead of the three-month hiatus, an attempt to reduce appearances from out-of-town activists. But they heard outcry from locals who said having to present identification and register 24 hours in advance to address elected officials would create an unfair burden.

Citing safety concerns that have only intensified after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump last weekend, council members said the break from all-topic public comment was needed to lower the temperature. The suspension will not apply to the public comment afforded for each individual agenda item.

“Especially in light of what happened nationally on Saturday, there is this atmosphere of danger lurking,” council member Lina Teixeira said. “I just have to open up my email, listen to my voicemail.”

Council member Ryan Cotton was the lone no vote, citing free speech concerns, but said he didn’t appreciate out-of-town activists showing up to “disturb and get a rise so they can either catch a lawsuit or hope to get enough clicks to start getting the ads” on YouTube.

“You guys put us in situations like this where we have to handcuff our actual residents,” Cotton said.

Public meetings have always featured constituents who insult, reprimand and excoriate elected officials sitting on the dais. But the rise of the smart phone in the mid-2000s created an online movement of government watchers who film interactions with public officials and can profit from the advertising generated by views on YouTube. Many call themselves First Amendment auditors.

Taylor said his activism is about holding government officials accountable to free speech even if he is saying things they don’t like. He said he carried ammunition in his vest last month “because I can.”

Clearwater Police Sgt. Jarred Stiff confirmed state law prohibits weapons in government meetings but it doesn’t address ammunition.

“I get why they don’t like me using the middle finger or wearing the f-bomb on my shirt, but at the same time I still have that freedom,” Taylor said in an interview last week. “They all swore an oath to defend what I’m doing.”

Taylor’s focus on Clearwater began in 2021 when he strolled a crowded Clearwater Beach with an AR-15-style pistol, a fishing rod and his GoPro camera. Taylor said he was was making a video to test local officials’ knowledge of state law, which prohibits openly carrying firearms with a few exceptions — including while going to and from fishing, hunting and camping.

Clearwater police detained Taylor for 40 minutes but determined his walk was legal. He showed up to speak at a council meeting that November and asked that officials be educated on the law. Police, including then-Deputy Chief Eric Gandy, removed Taylor from the meeting after he refused to leave when his allotted three minutes were up, argued with a man in the audience and called officials tyrants.

Taylor returned in July 2023 for Gandy’s swearing-in ceremony as police chief. He sat in the front row and raised his middle finger in view of the city’s camera that streams online and on TV.

In September, the council amended rules of conduct to prohibit speakers from extending the middle finger while another person has the floor; engaging in name calling or personal attacks; and shouting or speaking in a manner that threatens, among other stated disruptions.

Governments are permitted to put time, place and manner restrictions on speech, depending on the type of public forum. But even within the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, there have been conflicting rulings on what type of forum applies to a city council meeting.

In many cases, the court has ruled city council meetings are limited public forums, meaning governments can place restrictions that are viewpoint neutral and reasonable to facilitate orderly meetings and carry out business.

But what qualifies as disruptive can be subjective, and it often takes litigation to determine whether a restriction is constitutional or not, said Lyrissa Lidsky, Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Chair in U.S. Constitutional Law at University of Florida Levin College of Law.

“You can set rules in place to prevent total disruption of the meeting, but how you define disruption is a hard question,” Lidsky said. “There’s ambiguities about how much disruption you have to tolerate.”

Then-Mayor Brian Aungst Sr. invoked the new rules in January when he ordered Taylor removed from the meeting for sitting in the back of the room in a shirt printed with profanities directed at city officials.

In March, Clearwater resident Daniel Holuba was arrested after he refused to leave a council meeting after Aungst said he violated the rules against name calling by saying Aungst had “thin skin.” Holuba was charged with trespass and later called the rule and his arrest unconstitutional.

The manner in which rules of decorum are applied factor into whether they would survive a First Amendment challenge, said Howard M. Wasserman, a professor of law at Florida International University. If they are only invoked when someone is critical of a city official, that could be viewpoint discrimination, he said.

“You can’t call him a negative name, but I assume you could get up there and say he’s the best mayor ever or a wonderful mayor instead of a thin-skinned mayor, so that may not be viewpoint neutral,” Wasserman said.

City Attorney David Margolis said state law requires cities to provide the public an opportunity to be heard on agenda items. But Margolis said the all-topic public comment portion, which he calls “open mic,” is not required by law.

Clearwater residents like Patricia Kirby have used the citizens-to-be-heard portion to foster public discussion of issues like Duke Energy’s recent cutting down of trees. She urged the council not to take away this face-to-face opportunity.

During the council’s discussion of the suspension, Taylor and another YouTube activist John Filax were removed from the council chambers after Mayor Rector gaveled them out of order for what he said were disturbances.

Rector said the council will be able to revisit the suspension after a period to “lower the emotion and lower the tension.”

“I regret we’ve let this small part of our agenda be hijacked by folks who are trying to run a commercial business and make for profit videos by putting on a show,” Rector said.