BRUNSWICK

The town council addressed the matter of the Facebook page associated with Brunswick Community United on Monday night in relationship to Freedom of Access Act responsibilities.

Town Manager John Eldridge said the council was discussing the closed social media group after stories from The Times Record and the Bangor Daily News noted the number of public officials in the now 624 member-strong page.

Eldridge said the first thing he wanted to make sure was clear for the council is that the Brunswick Community United Facebook page is neither a town-sponsored nor town-supported page.

He said that he had been asked if the town had taken any measures to archive the conversations that have taken place on the page wall and that the answer is “no, we wouldn’t, it’s not our page.”

“Having said that, I think I can say that my experience in council has been pretty good about understanding its Freedom of Access Act responsibilities. We periodically come back to those and again, I think people know what those are and I think enough has been said in terms of public deliberations out on electronic media,” Eldridge said.

Eldridge said there have also been calls about social media policy and while he said they are looking at that, their policy has always been driven strictly by the town’s use of social media and not individual groups.

“It’s something we’re aware of. It’s something that we’re in the process of updating and that will be completed shortly, but again I just want to be clear that this is not a page that is sponsored or maintained by the town,” Eldridge said.

The conversation was briefly turned over to town attorney Stephen Langsdorf.

“Like all public communications of that nature, it’s fine to have open forums where people are commenting and so forth, but you just want to stay away from public officials really directly commenting on issues that are appearing or viewed as a body and to focus your resources onto having those presentations and discussions as part of having your public meetings,” Langsdorf said.

“I don’t think that anything illegal or improper was going on but it was getting closer. A lot of officials were talking about present issues,” Langsdorf said.

John Richardson expressed that he was still a member of the page and that he simply saw it as useful information and nothing else.

“There’s nothing illegal or inappropriate to be on there and understand it’s just like anything else, you are on a website or on a page because it helps you understand the issues that are being brought forward and I thought it was much ado about nothing frankly,” Richardson said.

“I think we have to be very careful because it deals with free speech and my right and the right of everybody else in Brunswick or elsewhere to comment on matters of importance to the community and I saw nothing there in that particular page that would cause me any concern at all — if there was, I would have addressed it,” Richardson said.

“I’m still on there. I intend to stay on there because I think it’s a great opportunity for me to be able to keep abreast of all the issues that are germane to Brunswick and to the school district,” Richardson said.

“The biggest reason why I’m on is because I want to hear what the heck Rich Ellis is doing,” Richardson said, bringing laughter from the council when referring to the school board member.

Councilor Kathy Wilson said that when she joined the page she simply wanted to hear more about what was going on and that although she often comments on other things, her role with the page has been more of an observer.

Councilor Jane Millett said she was a member of the BCU page before she served on the council.

“I also haven’t said anything that I haven’t said in a town meeting and I do discourage those kinds of conversations because people’s comments trip over each other and somebody has a misunderstanding, other people accept it and it just takes on a life of its own. If you can set the record straight at that time, sometimes that’s very helpful,” Millett said.

dmcintire@timesrecord.com

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