Borough employees act as a direct link between the public and their local government. At best, this can make them a sounding board for grievances and ideas. At worst, this can lead them to bear the brunt of frustrations toward the municipality.

At the Sept. 8 assembly meeting, Borough Manager Mason Villarma announced that staff would present an addition to municipal code, a consolidated “Code of Conduct and Trespass on Public Property” chapter for the assembly to review. The move comes after threats were allegedly made against several officials on borough-owned property.

While the situation is under investigation, Villarma said they wanted to have the ability to respond to similar incidents in the future.

“Recently, there’s been a community member that made some threats against a … series of borough officials, and we didn’t have a whole lot of tools within our municipal code to act upon it,” said Villarma at the Sept. 8 meeting.

At the Sept. 22 meeting, the assembly had their first read of the new code and voted unanimously to move it forward to a second reading, public comment and potential adoption at their Oct. 13 meeting.

The code “identifies conduct that may result in removal, exclusion, restricted access, conditional access or other protective action,” according to meeting materials. Some of the behaviors include but are not limited to violence, attempted violence, or true threats of unlawful violence, stalking, unlawful harassment, and sexual harassment, and damage, destruction, defacement or unlawful taking of property.

Villarma explained to the assembly that it would allow employees to request people who violate the code to leave borough property. If the individual failed to do so, officials would be able to request their removal by police on the grounds of trespassing.

Depending on the extent of the threatening or harmful behavior, a probation period could be imposed on the individual, barring them from returning to the property where the event occurred for a period of time to be decided by the borough.

In an interview on Sept. 24, Villarma said the probation ban from one building, for example the library, would not necessarily mean that the person could not enter the Nolan Center during that time. “But it would depend on the nature and extent of the conduct.”

During the first read of the code ordinance, Assembly Member Dan Powers expressed concern over protecting residents’ constitutionally protected First Amendment right to express their opinion.

Villarma pointed out at the meeting that there had been a code of conduct on the books at one point but it had been removed for some reason before his tenure as manager. He assured the assembly that they had every intention to protect people’s rights, but that they also had a duty to protect their employees.

“This has nothing to do with people’s freedom of expression or speech or representing their opinions. In fact, that’s all very much encouraged,” Villarma said in the Sept. 24 interview. “But if there are serious threats, in this case death threats, made to particular members that serve the public, we need to be able to take measures that are appropriate for those circumstances.”