FINDLAY, Ohio — If someone has a problem with their village, township or city, they can typically voice their thoughts at public meetings during public comment sessions.
But Findlay City Council is looking to change its rules for public comment following a heated meeting in February.
"Because of deceptions, misrepresentations, and her socialist, communist agenda, today, I am asking for mayor (Christina) Muryn's resignation," Haydee Sadler said at a council meeting last month.
Council President John Harrington then interrupted Sadler, saying "This is a city council meeting. This isn't a beat up on our mayor meeting."
The two went back and forth before Harrington stopped her again, saying "Be quiet! You will be quiet or I will have you removed."
Sadler lost the Republican mayoral primary to Muryn in 2023. As she did when campaigning for the party's nomination last year, Sadler at the council meeting said she thinks Muryn is opposing Republican values.
"I honestly thought that they would say we would do better, just the stuff that they would say all the time," Sadler said of the meeting. "I wasn't expecting to get gaveled down."
After the meeting, eight council members, including Joshua Palmer, went to the council president wanting to discuss council rules on public comment.
"City council meeting is a limited public forum," Palmer said. "There are restrictions on speech, and that's spelled out in the Ohio Sunshine Law."
Palmer volunteered to chair a new committee on the issue.
According to the Findlay City Charter, public comments at council meetings are limited to four minutes per person and anyone who "causes actual disruption by making personal attacks, slanderous remarks or other disruptive conduct while addressing the council shall be barred from further participation in the meeting."
There have been no changes to these rules yet, but some ideas like allowing people to speak at specific times to stay on topic were proposed at a committee meeting Wednesday.
"The next meeting we are going to dig deeper and come up with the changes and finalize those," Palmer said. "Then we're going to submit those to our law department to make sure they do meet the Ohio Revised Code."
Sadler was at the committee meeting and said she feels her rights are being violated. She was collecting signatures to put an issue on the ballot to allow 10 people six minutes of comment at council meetings.
"It's the people's council, these council members represent we the people or they should, so should the mayor," Sadler said. "That's where we're standing, for more voices of the people, not less."
Muryn did not respond to an after hours request for comment Wednesday.
The next committee meeting is on March 26 at 4 p.m.