The Ceres City Council decided on Monday to “temporarily” ban the public from providing verbal comments at meetings through the Zoom platform. The action comes in the aftermath of two Zoom callers who spewed back-to-back inflammatory racist comments during the Sept. 25 City Council meeting.
“It has not been limited to Ceres,” said Ceres City Attorney Nubia Goldstein. “There have been a series of ‘Zoom bombing’ events throughout California in the last couple of weeks. It did seem to stem very close in time to when our last City Council meeting occurred.”
The entire council liked the idea of continuing broadcasting on Zoom but was split over the matter of allowing public comment.
The council voted 3-2 to continue with Zoom but not allow public comments via Zoom. Vice Mayor Bret Silveira and Councilman James Casey voted in favor of allowing verbal public comments on Zoom. They were overruled by Mayor Javier Lopez, and Councilmembers Daniel Martinez and Rosalinda Vierra.
Silveira, who was absent during the Sept. 25 zoom bombing, later heard the recording and called the comments “terrible and atrocious” but cautioned against a knee-jerk reaction.
“It may not be a problem if it only happened one time,” said Silveira. “I think we should go as we’ve done in the past since the pandemic and allow people to make comments. If it becomes a problem, if it happens again, then we should reconsider it again. At this point we don’t know if it’s going to happen again.”
He added that he would “hate to take the access away from our constituents … when they can’t make it to the meetings.”
The Sept. 25 Zoom bombing came during a discussion of unmet public transit needs in the county. One individual identified as Jim Atkinson asked for clarification if the discussion was about government funded transportation and went on to use offensive and racially disparaging terms for those who use the city bus. The remark dropped jaws in the audience, including Jean Foletta, StanCOG’s Director of Mobility Programs, standing at the podium.
A second caller appeared to be serious in his comments but then trolled, “We need to purchase as many cattle cars that we can to ship these n*****s and k***s back to their homeland where they came….”
Lopez immediately shut both callers down and suspected that others lined up were waiting to pull a similar stunt. The mayor called the two callers “a bunch of clowns” and ordered an end to public comments via Zoom due to the lack of decorum. His order was backed by Goldstein “for now” because of “the breach of decorum.”
Not all were happy when the mayor shut down the ability of Zoom users to comment. Ceres resident Gene Yeakley wasn’t present at the meeting but didn’t appreciate the mayor’s actions.
“These people deprived me and some other people from voicing their selves from public communication,” Yeakley told the Courier.
Another resident fired off an email to the city manager to say this: “If an agenda has been posted with a link to zoom and community members believe they will have the ability to speak, how can the city attorney say the mayor can make the decision to end zoom comments, which appeared to have happened?”
The same resident questioned why the city wasn’t transparent when it redacted audio of the calls from the video of the meeting posted on YouTube. She asked: “How can one be certain exactly what else the city clerk has manipulated to an official record of that meeting?”
Ceres resident John Warren said while Zoom is convenient for many and that users can always email the city clerk and have their comments read. But Goldstein said it’s often not practical for a citizen to quickly word an email to question or provide input in real time.