Should A Speaker At The July 7 Council Meeting Have Been Interrupted?

At the July 7, 2026, Saratoga Springs City Council meeting, Dave Buchyn spoke during the public comment period. Mr. Buchyn, who is Vice President of the Upstate Conservative Coalition and former chair of the Saratoga County Conservative Party, offered critical commentary about the histories of two Saratoga Springs elected officials, addressing them directly.

Under the Council’s normal public-comment protocol, the Mayor explains that speakers are strictly limited to three minutes and should direct their remarks to the Council as a whole.

Mr. Buchyn began by singling out Saratoga County Supervisor Sara Burger and Public Works Commissioner BK Keramati.

Commissioner of Accounts Jessica Troisi interrupted him and asked Mayor Safford, “This can’t be appropriate?”

The Mayor then carried on a brief exchange with Buchyn during which he granted that Buchyn had the right to say whatever he wanted but urged him to email these concerns rather than express them at the meeting. Buchyn and the Mayor are friends and Buchyn graciously agreed to end his comments.

Correcting The Record

Following the public comment period, the Council discussed whether Buchyn had the right to make those remarks.

Public Safety Commissioner Coll explained to his colleagues that, under the city’s recent agreement with the New York State Attorney General and opinions issued by the New York State Committee on Open Government, the city cannot legally restrict speakers based on the content of their remarks. He emphasized that, no matter how offensive or disturbing some comments may be, the law protects the speakers’ right to make them.

Anyone who has followed this blog has seen numerous videos of activists cursing at, taunting, and shouting at Council members without consequence. Readers will also know that meeting decorum has been a major issue, one that has drawn the city into litigation and proceedings involving the Attorney General.

Coll was simply reminding his colleagues of that history and cautioning them about the legal consequences of disregarding it.

BK Keramati Never Listens

Public Works Commissioner Keramati joined the discussion by telling his colleagues that he “took exception” to Coll’s statement. He then argued that public comments should be limited to matters of city policy and that personal attacks should be prohibited. That Coll had just explained that the law does not permit such content-based restrictions appeared to escape Keramati.

Regrettably, Commissioner Keramati seems to be continuing a pattern established during the previous two administrations, in which inconvenient facts— including laws and authoritative legal opinions—are treated as though they do not exist. At no point did Keramati address Coll’s central argument: that the law protects even the most offensive verbal attacks.

Readers should also recall that Commissioner Keramati did nothing to object when previous Council members were subjected to severe abuse during the Black Lives Matter controversy.

I could not agree more with Commissioner Keramati that participants should be civil and respectful at Council meetings. At the risk of sounding snarky, however, I must ask: Where has Commissioner Keramati been for the past seven years? I don’t recall him criticizing Ron Kim, past Mayor and now chair of the city’s Democratic Committee, past Commissioner of Accounts Dillon Moran, and past Commissioner of Finance Minita Sanghvi who vigorously attacked their colleagues and supported the toxic attacks by the BLM people.