Clearwater City Council suspends public comments to end YouTube ‘circus’

CLEARWATER – Members of the public will not be allowed to address City Council on issues not on the agenda for the next three months in an effort to repair what Mayor Bruce Rector said has “become a circus” due to disruptions from YouTube activists.

Michael Taylor, a Port St. Lucie resident, has frequently attended meetings over the past year to complain about police, city staff and City Council spending on his monetized YouTube channel. While his camera was rolling, he shouted profanities, gave the middle finger and refused to leave after being told he was violating City Council rules.

In June, he stepped to the podium wearing a bulletproof vest full of ammunition and began his speech with: “Yeah, this isn’t going to be pretty.”

The council voted 4-1 on Monday to suspend the portion of the meetings where citizens are heard until October. Council members said the online videos have led to threats of rape and violence against city officials and caused residents and staff to be afraid to attend meetings.

The Tampa Bay Times requested copies of the threats, but city spokeswoman Joelle Castelli said they were part of an ongoing police investigation and could not be released.

The council considered limiting public comment to Pinellas County residents instead of the three-month hiatus to reduce the number of appearances by activists from other cities. But locals protested, saying requiring identification and registration 24 hours in advance to speak before elected officials was an unfair burden.

Citing security concerns heightened following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump last weekend, council members said the pause in public comment on all issues was necessary to calm the mood. The pause does not apply to public comment on individual agenda items.

“Especially in light of what happened nationwide on Saturday, there is an atmosphere of danger,” said Council Member Lina Teixeira. “All I have to do is open my email and listen to my voicemail.”

Council member Ryan Cotton was the only one to vote no, citing free speech concerns but saying he didn’t appreciate out-of-town activists showing up to “disrupt and cause a ruckus so they can either get a lawsuit or hope to get enough clicks to run their ads on YouTube.”

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

Public meetings have always included voters who insult, rebuke, and harshly criticize elected officials from the podium. But with the advent of the smartphone in the mid-2000s, an online movement of government observers emerged who can film conversations with officials and profit from the publicity generated by the YouTube views. Many of them call themselves “First Amendment Auditors.”

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Taylor said his activism is aimed at holding government officials accountable for free speech, even when he says things they don’t like. He said he carried ammunition in his vest last month “because I can.”

Clearwater Police Sergeant Jarred Stiff confirmed that state law prohibits guns at government meetings but does not address ammunition.

“I understand why they don’t like it when I give the middle finger or wear the F-word on my shirt, but at the same time I still have that freedom,” Taylor said in an interview last week. “They’ve all vowed to defend what I do.”

Taylor’s focus on Clearwater began in 2021 when he strolled along a crowded Clearwater Beach with an AR-15-style pistol, a fishing rod and his GoPro camera. Taylor said he shot a video to test local officials’ knowledge of state law that prohibits the open carry of firearms with few exceptions — including on the way to and from fishing, hunting and camping.

Clearwater police detained Taylor for 40 minutes but ruled his walk was legal. He showed up at a city council meeting in November of that year and asked to inform officers of the law. Police, including then-Deputy Police 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 officers bullies.

Taylor returned to Gandy’s swearing-in ceremony as police chief in July 2023. He sat in the front row and extended his middle finger to the city’s camera, which broadcasts online and on television.

In September, the council changed the rules of conduct to prohibit speakers from, among other things, showing the middle finger while someone else is speaking, using foul language or making personal attacks, and shouting or speaking in a threatening manner.

Governments may impose temporal, geographical and stylistic restrictions on free speech depending on the type of public forum. But even at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, there have been conflicting rulings about what type of forum applies to a city council meeting.

In many cases, the Court has held that city council meetings are limited public forums, meaning governments can impose viewpoint-neutral and reasonable restrictions to allow orderly meetings and the conduct of business.

But what is considered disruptive can be a subjective matter, and court cases are often necessary to determine whether a restriction is constitutional or not, says Lyrissa Lidsky, the Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Chair in U.S. Constitutional Law at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law.

“You can set rules to prevent total disruption of the meeting, but how you define disruption is a difficult question,” Lidsky said. “There is confusion about how much disruption you have to tolerate.”

Then-Mayor Brian Aungst Sr. cited the new rules in January when he ejected Taylor from the meeting because he was sitting in the back of the room wearing a T-shirt with profanities against city officials.

In March, Clearwater resident Daniel Holuba was arrested after refusing to leave a council meeting after Aungst accused him of violating the rules against profanity by calling Aungst “thin-skinned.” Holuba was charged with trespassing and later called the rules and his arrest unconstitutional.

The way civility rules are applied determines whether they stand up to a First Amendment challenge, says Howard M. Wasserman, a law professor at Florida International University. If they are applied only when someone criticizes a city official, that could be speech discrimination, he says.

“You can’t disparage him, but I suppose you could go up there and say he’s the best mayor ever or a wonderful mayor, rather than a thin-skinned mayor. So that might not be neutral to the point of view anymore,” Wasserman said.

City Attorney David Margolis said that state law requires cities to have the ability to give the public a chance to be heard on agenda items. But Margolis said public comment on all issues, which he calls “open mic,” is not required by law.

Clearwater residents like Patricia Kirby have used the citizen hearing portion to encourage public discussion on issues such as Duke Energy’s recent tree removal, and she urged the council not to deny this opportunity for in-person interaction.

During the council discussion on the suspension, Taylor and another YouTube activist, John Filax, were removed from the council chamber after Mayor The principal called the police with a hammer because, in his opinion, there had been a disturbance of the peace.

Rector said the council could reconsider the suspension after a period of time to “de-escalate emotions and reduce tension.”

“I regret that we have allowed this small part of our agenda to be hijacked by people trying to run a commercial business and produce for-profit videos by putting on a show,” Rector said.