Council Seeks to Bite Its Tongue

You have to watch your language in City Hall. Even if you’re elected.

After an unprintable slip of the tongue by the mayor, the City Council has asked staffers to draft a resolution prohibiting council members, like anyone else, from swearing at its meetings.

Current guidelines provide that people who use profanity when addressing the council or a city commission can be declared out of order by whoever is chairing the meeting.

But it says nothing about what to do when the council members or the commission chairs are the ones uttering the off-limit words.

At a Redevelopment Agency meeting last week, Mayor Walter Donovan used a barnyard epithet in an argument with a council member over a vacant parcel of downtown property.

The word, used to describe a bull’s manure, offended council member Bob Dinsen, who called for the stricter policy. Donovan said he didn’t mean to swear but let it slip during the argument with council member J. Tilman Williams.

“My Irish temper got the best of me last week,” Donovan said. “It’s true. Council members shouldn’t use profane language.” Although the council voted unanimously to draft the new policy, council member Frank Kessler suggested that the council put aside petty infighting to concentrate on important issues.

After all, he said, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf told Congress that he was “damn proud” of the armed forces.

“Harry Truman once said, ‘One man’s profanity is another man’s philosophy,’ ” said council member Mark Leyes.