'Tone It Down': Danvers Select Board Member Calls For Civil Discourse

DANVERS, MA — Danvers Select Board members are asking residents for civility and decorum when speaking at public meetings after a series of recent discussions on hot-button topics spurred profanity and personal attacks toward board members.

A series of Select Board discussions on the recent attack on resident Chris "Ducky" Anderson that led to assault indictments against four teens, as well as recent Zoning Board of Appeals meetings on development proposals, devolved into shouting and calls for the resignation of board members by residents speaking during public comment or in attendance.

"I can't help but implore our fellow residents to tone it down," Select Board member Dutrochet Djoko said. "Especially this holiday season, let's start the year on new footings. None of us here deserve to be insulted — especially not our chairman. We can't make anyone not say what they want to say but all I can do is just implore our residents to tone it down.

"This isn't about limiting anyone's speech or censorship. It's about creating space where we can express different opinions while treating each other with dignity and respect."

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Select Board member David Mills expressed concern last year when he was chair of the Select Board that a state Supreme Judicial Court ruling that put restrictions on a town board's ability to limit resident speech during public comment left the boards vulnerable to repercussions for limiting comments and attacks that may be deemed inappropriate.

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"Stuff that has happened in this room over the last year scares me," Mills said. "People know that I have been a lawyer for 55 years and I don't practice anymore because it's too hard. Everybody fights.

"I am embarrassed to say that in this nation, in my lifetime, lawyers do awful, stupid things. I don't know why. Probably for money."

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Mills asked that town counsel help devise a guideline that boards can use — in Danvers, and perhaps across the state in collaboration with other town counsels — to inform board chairs on what they must allow and what type of speech and behavior they can disallow during public meetings.

"I don't scare easily," Mills said. "But I don't want someone filing a federal civil rights complaint against me with respect to a citizen's right to free speech."

Select Board Chair Daniel Bennett said he may seek to limit the time duration when residents can speak — which is common in neighboring cities and towns and which appears to be in line with the SJC ruling — as a way to limit repeated attacks and streamline public discussions.

"There is a huge gap in (the understanding of) what can and can't be said in public meetings and it ought to be clarified," Mills said.

Bennett initially resisted public comment directly in response to Police Chief James Lovell's appearance before the Select Board on Nov. 7 related to the attack and other cases of teens on bicycles terrorizing residents and downtown shop owners but relented amid pressure from the dozens in attendance, and what followed were more heated exchanges reminiscent of those from the Oct. 15 meeting in the days after the attack.

"It's really tough as a member of this community — it actually hurts — to see for two consecutive meetings with the tone," said School Committee Chair Gabe Lopes, who said he was speaking as a resident and not on behalf of the School Committee, at the Nov. 7 meeting. "I think everyone knows that. But I also know that it's not the majority of anyone's experience in this town."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.