By Patrick Adrian
[email protected]
CLAREMONT — This week the Claremont City Council voted 6-3 against censuring Councilor Jon Stone over his social media activity, finally concluding a motion raised nearly two months ago.
On Wednesday night, the council renewed a discussion from June 24 regarding whether to censure Stone for publishing controversial posts on Facebook. On May 28 Stone wrote about the council’s recently passed mask-resolution on his city councilor page, in which he called the resolution a “mandate” despite the council repeating explicitly that the resolution was non-binding. On June 20 Stone posted, on someone’s personal page, an expletive-laced comment about supporters of the Black Lives Matters movement.
Councilors James Contois and Abigail Kier moved to censure Stone at the June 24 council meeting. The council later voted to table the motion to seek legal opinion.
Several councilors on Wednesday were more eager to finally put the motion to rest and refocus on governing duties.
“We’ve got more important things to deal with,” Councilor Deborah Matteau said. “I understand some people don’t like Jonathan Stone’s comments, but we don’t give up our first amendment rights when we become city councilors.”
Matteau added that the voters, not the council, are the appropriate authority to address the behavior of councilors.
“Jonathan Stone ran unopposed [in both his elections],” Matteau said. “If people in Ward III don’t like what he has to say as councilor, then someone should step up to the plate and run for office.”
Contois disagreed, pointing out that a censure is merely an official expression of disapproval, and the council is obligated as the governing body to denounce their members whose rhetoric cast a negative image of the council and city.
“We need to show the Claremont community that we do not agree with his message,” Contois said.
Mayor Charlene Lovett said that while she does not condone Stone’s comments, she believes censure would be a counterproductive approach.
“If I thought this would make this council work effectively together, then I would support it,” Lovett said. “But we have heard legal opinions from multiple attorneys that censuring doesn’t create an environment where governing bodies work effectively together. In fact, it does quite the opposite.”
City attorney Shawn Tanguay, in a letter to Claremont on Jan. 10, 2019, said that while the council has the authority to censure a sitting councilor, censure can be a detrimental solution and better reserved for “dire situations.”
“[Censure] often creates more hurt feelings and division among the councilors, that may be more injurious to the operation of the council than the issue being addressed,” Tanguay stated.
Notably, Tanguay had written that opinion in responding to a previous attempt to censure Stone in 2019, after Stone had doxxed the Facebook pages of two Claremont residents, posted their photos on his own page and made disparaging comments about them.
Claremont resident Sam Killay, who was one of the victims of the 2019 incident, brought the more recent complaint to the council about Stone’s Facebook post in May.
On Wednesday, Killay reminded the council that the issue behind the current censure motion was because Stone attempted to mislead the public about a health issue.
“This wasn’t him expressing an opinion but deliberately distorting information and trying to confuse the citizens of Claremont,” Killay said. “I’m not sure why there aren’t any censure provisions in the city charter [for that].”
As your daily newspaper, we are committed to providing you with important local news coverage for Sullivan County and the surrounding areas.