Sam Gurwitt file photo
Council President Mick McGarry.
It only took about eight minutes for the latest Hamden Legislative Council meeting to devolve into a shouting match.
It was another iteration in a saga of fiery meetings that have continually brought the body to political impasse over relatively minor agenda items, and another exhibition of the rancor on the council that has begun to make governing in Hamden as much about navigating toxic relationships as about passing ordinances.
Monday night’s meeting did end with a unanimous vote, though — to establish a committee to review the council’s rules of conduct.
But don’t be mistaken by the fact that it was unanimous. Members are still at each other’s throats about the reason for that resolution.
Valerie Horsley posted a tweet that was panned for being racially insensitive, which she removed and apologized for. Brad Macdowall wrote to another Twitter user asking for a screenshot of the tweet, saying he wanted something to show Horsley’s “true colors.” Horsley then introduced Monday’s resolution, saying Macdowall had bullied her. Both are still standing their ground.
The resolution was just one skirmish of many Monday in an ongoing battle at the Hamden Legislative Council.
The council has been divided for the last few years, and meetings have often ended with frayed nerves and outpourings of anger. Monday night was by no means the first time the council has spent hours fighting over its own procedures and interpersonal relationships. Nor was it the first time you might be able to pass off the meeting transcript for a Chekhov play.
The meeting began with an appeal for respectful conduct from Council President Mick McGarry. In his report of the president, McGarry told the council that there would be a meeting Thursday (which has since been rescheduled) to discuss the upcoming purchase of a drone by the police department.
McGarry ended his report with an appeal.
“We must be mindful that while we may disagree on certain items, and vote differently, I believe in my heart that everyone here tonight is here because they love the town of Hamden … Let’s focus on that and work together on the issues that are in front of us,” he said.
Finance Director Curtis Eatman gave a report. Then Justin Farmer raised his hand.
“Mr. Farmer, I see you have your hand up. Is that in reference to this?” McGarry asked.
“It was in reference to your opening remarks, Mr. President,” Farmer replied.
There was a long pause. The council had been through this many times before. It was clear what was coming.
“Uh, well, uh, the report of the president is just a report, Mr. Farmer, it’s not really question and answer. If you have questions please email them to me,” McGarry replied.
“It wasn’t a question, it was a comment,” Farmer replied.
McGarry paused again.
“Ok, well, perhaps you could share offline? Is it something to the nature of the agenda tonight?”
Man With Best Internet Connection Wins
Justin Farmer.
Farmer began to speak. “Transparency is pertinent, you know,” he said. He said he thought it was reactionary to hold a meeting about the drone on Thursday, without much notice, after he had asked for a meeting about it before the council approved the drone two weeks ago. He said it seemed like an effort to control the conversation, “and that is why we’re having that conversation on a national level, so when I brought up surveillance of our community, people first in need, when I brought that concern to you…”
McGarry cut in.
“Mr. Farmer, if you have a question about the drone, perhaps you could prepare that question for the meeting on Thursday. Otherwise we do have an agenda that we need to get to,” he said.
Farmer continued speaking. But in the world of Zoom arguments, the man with the best internet connection wins. That was McGarry. Whatever Farmer was saying, it came through as a mess of garbled electronic sounds.
McGarry started speaking again, and Farmer’s gestures got more emphatic. It was eight minutes and 15 seconds after McGarry’s appeal for a more civil council discourse.
“If you wish to speak to an agenda item please do,” McGarry continued.
The words “about having” were all that you could hear of Farmer’s raised voice on the other end of the line.
“Otherwise, Mr. Farmer, we have an agenda, there will be time on Thursday. If you wish to speak to the drone, there’s time on Thursday to address the drone.”
Finally, Farmer’s voice became audible again.
“To throw a conversation together, rather than to have an honest legitimate conversation as we always say that we are going to do yet we fail to do, that is the hypocrisy that I am calling out. So I did not have a question. It was a statement of the fact that this whole entire process we have had the inability to have an honest conversation about it, and last week…”
Austin Cesare cut in.
“Point of clarification, Mr. McGarry,” he said.
McGarry: “Yes, Mr. Cesare?”
Farmer’s frustration still audible but still an incomprehensible mess of electronic gurgles.
Cesare: “What time does the meeting start on Thursday night?”
McGarry: “It will be 7 o’clock”
Cesare: “Thank you very much.”
Kathleen Schomaker: “Thank you. Can we proceed with our agenda?”
McGarry, trying to quiet Farmer: “Any member of the public who has a question about the drone please email Ms. Renta and we’ll get that question answered…”
Farmer: “…so how, how do…”
McGarry: “…on Thursday.”
Schomaker: “Thank you. Can we proceed with our agenda?”
Farmer: “How are we getting that information out to the community?”
Cesare: “I don’t believe he has the floor.”
McGarry: “This is true, we need to move on to our agenda items.”
Farmer: “You asked if I had a question…”
McGarry: “We will, as we do with all things, Mr. Farmer, we will place the item on our agenda. We will post it on social media.”
Farmer: “…having that conversation. The police commission did not up until last week did not meet for six months, are they going…”
Megaphone Offered
Berita Rowe-Lewis: “Point of order! Point of order! Mr. President, take control of this meeting. Please take control of this meeting. This is not the way…”
Farmer: “Point of order!”
McGarry: “Mr. Farmer,…”
Rowe-Lewis: “This is not how this is supposed to happen, and you know that, Mr. Farmer. Please respect the process. You cannot come tonight to disrupt the meeting.”
Farmer: “… process …”
Rowe-Lewis: “Do not come tonight to disrupt the meeting. If you want to, I will get you a megaphone, Mr. Farmer. Not tonight, Mr. Farmer. Let’s get this going.”
Farmer: “I have a megaphone. If you want, I…”
Rowe-Lewis: “Let’s get this going Mr. Farmer. Mr. President, let’s go.”
Cesare: “Mr. President.”
Rowe-Lewis: “Come on!”
Farmer: “… 30 minutes with no conversation. This has been the conversation…”
McGarry: “Mr. Farmer your concerns are noted, but we do need to move on.”
Cesare: “This is not a conversation. This is an attempt to disrupt the meeting. This is not a conversation. A conversation goes both ways.”
The council members who were not participating in the shouting match just sat staring toward their computer cameras. Dominique Baez looked particularly crestfallen, her eyes wide.
Schomaker: “We will have the conversation on Thursday, 7 o’clock.”
Farmer: “… and have a conversation.”
McGarry: “Email questions to the council secretary, and we will…”
Farmer: “… this body has yet to talk about this situation, so I’ll leave it at that.”
McGarry: “Thank you Mr. Farmer. Mr. Macdowall, do you have a question on an item on the agenda this evening?”
Farmer: “It will not be business as usual.” He clicked a button on his computer, muting himself, and leaned back in his chair.
“Point of Order!” Streams
Silence. Maybe the Council would get to its first agenda item.
Or maybe not.
McGarry: “Mr. Macdowall?”
Macdowall: “Yes, considering that overtime is inflated, which pretty much anyone could have predicted …”
Macdowall was referring to Eatman’s presentation, in which he told the council that overtime was running high.
McGarry: “Mr. Macdowall, there’s no overtime on the agenda tonight. We need to move on to our…”
The fleeting hope of decorum vanished once more as Macdowall and McGarry started to butt heads. Macdowall asked why he could not ask a question on the report. McGarry told him that he should email in his questions, and that Eatman would answer them and send the answers to the whole council, but that it was unfair to expect Eatman to answer them all on the spot.
Another stream of “point of order!” and “please email your questions” and “why are you shutting me down?” ensued, punctuated by the image of a rather frustrated-looking McGarry, his chin resting in his palm, saying, “Reports are reports.”
When it was all over, and the agenda items were taken up, Horsley introduced her motion to add to the agenda a resolution to review the council’s rules of conduct, and the bad blood that had just stalled the meeting for half an hour became the first agenda item.
Nearly identical scenes have played out before on the council floor (and on Zoom). Macdowall and Farmer clash frequently with McGarry over when they can speak. Macdowall and Farmer contend that they’re being silenced unfairly, that McGarry denies them the right to speak because he disagrees with them, but lets others speak off topic. Other council members argue that Farmer and Macdowall frequently hold up meetings to discuss items that are not on the agenda, or to make points and attacks at inappropriate times, and that they take attempts to get the meeting back on track as attempts to silence them.
Whatever the case, Macdowall and Farmer clash with McGarry at many meetings, and arguments have lasted late into the night. At one meeting this winter, a motion to adjourn became a contentious vote after Macdowall tried to continue making a point he was particularly angry about and McGarry would not give him the floor. At the next meeting, there was a fight over the minutes of the previous one.
Tweetstorms & Alleged Bullying
Valerie Horsley.
Before the council got to any of the items already on the agenda, McGarry gave Horsley the floor to introduce the new agenda item.
She introduced a motion to add a resolution to the agenda that would set up a committee to review the council’s rules of conduct. She said she would like to be able to address “unethical behavior” of other council members, specifically Macdowall.
A few weeks ago, Horsley was involved in a Twitter fight. She is a biology professor at Yale, and had taken issue with a post by the editor of a major journal that she said made fun of a certain type of worm that many scientists use for research.
She responded by saying that she didn’t think it was appropriate for the editor of a journal to post something so disparaging about a worm that’s so important for many researchers. Other Twitter users jabbed back, defending the post by saying it was just a joke.
Horsley responded with a tweet she would later regret: “It’s just a joke … women and POC have heard that one before.”
The backlash was swift. “Ma’am,” tweeted one Twitter user. “The last think I need you to do is compare my struggle as a woman and as a black woman at that to a joke about a model organism on a website where scientists tell each other jokingly that they have the best model organism all the time.”
Horsley said she was trying to say that people often say offensive things and then try to defend themselves by passing it off as “just a joke,” but that they’re still offensive. But once she realized that that was not how other Twitter users were interpreting her tweet, she took it down.
“I shouldn’t have tweeted that. I’m sorry I did. I can see how that could be offensive,” she said. She then posted an apology tweet, but, as she put it, “then I got harassed for a week,” not just by other scientists, but also by her colleagues on the council.
After she deleted the tweet, she got a message from someone on Twitter who had called her out for the tweet. The other Twitter user sent her a screenshot of a conversation with Macdowall.
Macdowall had written to the other Twitter user asking if he had a screenshot of Horsley’s original post. “I am on the Hamden Legislative Council with her and she has been very problematic around policing issues. It would be nice to have something in writing that shows people her true colors,” he wrote.
The Twitter user replied that he did have a screenshot and asked how Horsley had been problematic.
“She has positioned herself as someone who can help root out racism in policing but has consistently acted as a gatekeeper to real change, including voting last night to divert $33,498 from a federal grant meant for PPE to purchase a drone with facial recognition technology so the police dept could ‘enforce social distancing protocol,’” Macdowall wrote.
That, said Horsley, crossed the line between a simple political disagreement on an issue and bullying.
“When a disagreement results in an attempt to hurt, control, or defame another person, it becomes bullying,” she told the council.
Macdowall and Horsley had cast opposing votes on the council’s motion approve a grant for the police department that included the planned purchase of a drone. Police Chief John Sullivan has said that the drone would be used mostly for search and rescue missions, and would not be used for surveillance. The department is working on a policy that will govern the drone’s use. Sullivan has said that the drone will not have facial recognition technology.
Macdowall has said he is concerned that the drone will be used for surveillance. He posted a section of the drone maker’s website that he said appears to show the drone does have facial recognition technology. (The website passage does not say the camera has that capacity. Rather, it says the camera’s artificial intelligence can recognize an image it has captured before. In the website’s context, that appears to mean the drone can capture the same image twice, but not that it can recognize faces.)
After Horsley’s post, she and Macdowall had a back and forth on Twitter in which Macdowall accused Horsley of voting “to surveil black and brown communities.”
Horsley replied, “I would never support surveillance of ‘black and brown communities.’ I voted to save lives in search and rescue of the 200 incidents/yr,” referring to the many missions the fire department conducts, especially in Sleeping Giant State Park.
Brad Macdowall.
After the Twitter exchange, Macdowall called Horsley. In Horsley’s telling, the conversation was not going anywhere, so she asked to call him back in the morning. She did not call him back. Macdowall said he was respectful the whole time, stating his position, and then hanging up when she asked. He said he texted her the next morning when he did not hear from her, and when she didn’t respond, he did not follow up again.
Macdowall told the Independent that a constituent asked him if he knew what Horsley had posted, and he replied that he did not, but that he would try to find out. He said that was why he wrote to the person who ended up giving him the screenshot.
“A constituent asked for transparency and I tried to provide that transparency,” he said. “This is an attempt by somebody who said something racist on Twitter to deflect attention from themselves onto somebody else,” he said of Horsley. “At the end of the day, people are being held accountable, and they think it’s bullying.”
Most of the council members who spoke to Horsley’s resolution said they supported Horsley, and some piled more ire on Macdowall, with whom they frequently disagree.
“I’m going to go with me too,” began Marjorie Bonadies, the Republican who represents Macdowall’s district and who has been in a number of conflicts with Macdowall. She said he had called her names on social media before. (In 2019, Macdowall did call her racist after she liked a post on Nextdoor that called southern Hamden a “ghetto.”) “You’re always wanting to have a conversation, but the minute you do that, you go to this highest hyperbole and the conversation is over,” she said.
Rowe-Lewis said she sees the incident as two male council members “bullying their female counterpart.”
Macdowall stood his ground. “We must conduct ourselves outside of the council chambers… with decorum and with concern for the issues and our residents. And when our social media behavior runs counter to that, I think it is very important that that information be made public,” he said.
As he continued, he mentioned the drone. McGarry cut in, telling him he was off topic. Again, they battled over whether Macdowall was speaking on the item at hand.
Farmer pointed out that in a conversation about bullying, the council must also acknowledge the racism he has experienced from colleagues. He recalled an incident in which a fellow elected official said “once in a blue coon,” to him. Another asked if he had “goons” to prevent a white person from running against him.
Though the discussion was heated, the result was not controversial. The council voted to add the resolution to the agenda, and then a few minutes before midnight when the item finally came up for a vote, it passed unanimously.
Reviewing the rules of council conduct may not do much. Beyond making a general statement about being civil toward fellow council members, the rules likely will not be able to regulate how council members speak and post about each other outside of the council chambers. But Hamden is not the only town considering such a measure.
This week, members of the Bridgeport City Council submitted a resolution directing the city attorney to look into rules that could prevent abusive conduct on the council. The resolution is the result of actions by councilwoman Maria Pereira.
Hamden’s resolution will have to come before the council again so it can approve the committee that will review the council’s rules. And when the resolution returns, the council just might manage to go more than eight minutes and 15 seconds without beginning to shout.
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