Hope this isn’t city’s legacy
On the evening of March 20, 2023, I approached the microphone at the Columbia Falls City Council meeting, during the time allotted for public comment on non-agenda issues.
What was intended to be the 3-minute starting point of an open, public, and transparent conversation about several issues with the City Council and staff noted by the community, with the desired end goal of allowing discussion of community grievances, and facilitate the path into an accountable and transparent government, soon went dramatically awry.
What was intended to bring opportunity for the community to openly work with their elected government, for the purpose of influencing that government to start working with and for their constituents and community, turned into a community disaster of dire proportion.
Approximately two minutes into the presentation, having provided four instances of situations that lacked accountability and/or transparency from the City Council and Staff, the Mayor of Columbia Falls abruptly interrupted me and directed me to leave the microphone. What ensued was a situation of me defending my rights as provided by the printed and provided speaking rules of the subject City Council meeting, the Montana State Open Meetings Code and Constitution, and my federally protected Constitutional First Amendment Rights, against a Mayor determined to silence me. In the end, the Mayor ordered the Columbia Falls Chief of Police to remove me from the microphone. As I continued to verbally defend my rights to speak, the Chief of Police complied with the orders of the Mayor, and physically removed me from the podium and physically escorted me to the door. At the door, the Chief of Police and I had further discussion about my rights and the laws that provide for them, and the Chief offered for me to return to the meeting as long as I sat in back and gained “Mayor approval to speak again.”
When I stepped up to that microphone, I carried four grievances and a charge for accountability and transparency. What left that microphone was a wave of intimidation and fear that is still rippling through the community. Today, members of this community are speaking over concerns about stepping up to that microphone themselves.
They are also speaking of fear of allowing their teenaged children to attend future meetings, much less speak at them. This is the face of true intimidation. Of the four grievances that I carried to that microphone, one was later addressed and dismissed by the City Council and the City Staff, and two of the remaining three were provided to me by firsthand witnesses that wished for me to carry the message.
Today, after witnessing the conduct of the Mayor last night, those firsthand witnesses are now unwilling to continue the charge for accountability and transparency. They have requested that I no longer proceed on their behalf; therefore, as someone with the integrity to not pursue events that I did not witness myself, or have credible first-hand witnesses to confirm and support, I officially and publicly concede on any and all attempts to facilitate the voted government body being accountable and transparent to their constituents and community. Essentially, the battle was won 2 minutes in by an overreaching deprivation of a citizen’s rights, and the intimidation that it washed into the members of this community. What could have been a 3 minute start to a larger conversation that this community sorely needs, turned into a 5 minute atrocity that has shook members of this community to their core.
Out of my love for our community and respect for their Chief of Police, the newly found issue of the deprivation of my City, State, and Constitutionally provided rights, and the crimes that were ordered and committed in the act of depriving me of these rights is an issue that, after great thought, I have determined that I will not pursue.
While it was an explicit violation of my personal rights, the very rights that make us a free and great nation, I will not put this community deeper into peril, as they would have to witness the arduous process and results that it would produce.
This would undoubtedly turn the community of Columbia Falls into a polarized political battle ground, and I will not be the pilot of that. In closing, please take the time to understand the new precedence in the community of Columbia Falls that has now been created. I hope that this is not the legacy that was intended when our current voted and appointed government officials took their oath of office, and I desperately hope that they do everything in their power, for the remainder of their term, to ensure that this is not a lasting legacy upon this community.
Matthew Padgett
Columbia Falls