Soldotna council kills disruptive-conduct rules at city manager's request

The Soldotna City Council voted 6-0 Wednesday against an ordinance that would have set rules for barring people from city property over threatening or disruptive behavior. City Manager Janette Bower, who proposed it in July, asked the council to vote it down.

The city can already keep people off public property in some circumstances under state law, Bower wrote when she introduced the ordinance, but it had no formal process for when and how to do it.

The ordinance would have let the city manager or the person in charge of a city facility issue written trespass notices, lasting up to a year for a first notice, over conduct such as repeated threats or harassment, yelling or screaming that disrupts city business, behavior that made a reasonable person fear for their safety, or disrupting a public meeting by speaking past the time limit or interfering with other speakers.

People could have appealed within 10 business days, and notices were supposed to leave them another way, such as remote participation, to attend public meetings. Criticism of officials or peaceful expression alone would not have counted.

No one from the public spoke on the ordinance at its Aug. 12 hearing or on Wednesday. In August, the council voted 5-0 to amend it on a motion by Council Member Chera Wackler, striking language that would also have counted being "unduly repetitious" or "discussing or presenting irrelevant matters" at a meeting as disruptive. It then postponed the vote to Wednesday.

Bower wrote in a memo for Wednesday's meeting that she still supports the ordinance's purpose. "After further consideration," she wrote, she believes the city can give employees a consistent way to handle those situations through administrative procedures instead. The city administration will write guidance on employees' responsibilities, documentation, appropriate responses and supervisory review.

The council voted without discussion. Afterward, Council Member Dave Carey thanked Bower for taking on the issue, which he said came from how "a very, very small number of individuals" had treated city staff — people, he said, who "weren't getting the teaching from their parents as they should have."

"It is very difficult to legislate such things as courtesy, kindness, manners, compassion for each other," Carey said.

He said Bower "responded so well" when Wackler and others "said, wait, wait, wait," and that her request to defeat the ordinance "was exactly what good government is supposed to do."