Mayor Calls On Doylestown Supervisor To Apologize For 'Extraordinary Harm' In Flyer

DOYLESTOWN, PA — Doylestown's mayor and borough council president have called on a township supervisor to apologize after she was "positively identified" distributing pamphlets that disparaged local educators, an LGBTQ+ space, and the work of the Human Rights Commission.

"We unequivocally support the rights of all individuals to exercise their rights to free speech," Mayor Ron Strouse and Borough Council President Jack O'Brien wrote. "We believe that carries with it an obligation to strive to be accurate and truthful with regard to those who hold differing views. We expect our elected officials, at all levels of government, to hold to those .... or higher ... standards. The literature you are associated with, through inappropriate distribution and, perhaps, authorship, is blatantly false."

Many community members came to a supervisor's meeting last week to call on Doylestown Township Supervisor Nancy Santacecilia, the elected official in question, to resign.

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According to the Bucks County Courier Times, Central Bucks Education Association President Bill Senavaitis said Santacecilia was seen in a district office dropping off letters that, among other accusations, claimed that Senavaitis was trying to replace white Bucks County teachers because of their race. It is unknown whether or not Santacecilia wrote the letters herself.

The letter partly criticizes Senavaitis for attending a Human Rights Commission meeting, asking "why is he trying to replace YOU based on your skin color and divide our community?" It also identifies him as “align[ing] with Rise Up Doylestown and Marlene Pray - Director of the Rainbow Room and the NAACP Bucks Education chair to prompt a slate of school board candidates that will vote on policy, curriculum and the union contract for the largest suburban school district in Pennsylvania.” The Rainbow Room is an empowering space in Bucks County for LGBTQ+ youth and allies, a Planned Parenthood Keystone program.

Many called for Santacecilia to step down, due to the homophobic and racist sentiments in the letter.

She could only be removed by stepping down under the Pennsylvania Constitution, short of a governor's order and a two-thirds majority vote in the state Senate.

But at the supervisor's meeting she seemed unlikely to step aside, saying that the community was "being deceived." She apologized to her fellow supervisors but not to Senavaitis, Pray, or the Human Rights Commission.

"We call upon you to respond and to extend apologies to the Doylestown Human Relations Commission for the extraordinary harm you have done to them and to the Borough of Doylestown," Strouse and O'Brien wrote in their Tuesday letter.

They also said, "We believe it is core to our mission, as elected representatives in our community, to work to build a stronger, more inclusive community and a community that is respectful of our differences as well as common ground. Your actions have done everything contrary to those goals."

Other supervisors on the board also vocally expressed their opposition to the pamphlet last week.

“This abhorrent flyer utilized fear of people of color taking jobs and attacks against an essential resource for the LGBTQ+ youth in our community," supervisor Jen Herring said, as reported by the Courier Times. "It is unacceptable that any member of our community, especially an elected official, is willing to incite division and harm the lives of children to gain political advantage."

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