ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. — A husband and wife in St. Pete Beach are being investigated by Pinellas County deputies after tensions boiled over at a recent city commission meeting.
The couple tells 10 Tampa Bay News it’s their right to free speech, but one commissioner says harsh words at meetings are crossing the line.
Lauren Mones started recording on her phone last week when Pinellas detectives showed up at her Pass-A-Grille house.
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“I’m Detective Duran, this is Detective Thomas,” a woman says in the recording. “We’re from the sheriff’s office.”
“What about the behavior at the city council meetings?” Mones replies. “[The] behavior of being angry? We’re allowed to be angry.”
“Sure you are,” Duran responds.
It all goes back to a city commission meeting on March 24, when Mones and her husband, Ronald Vigneault, were visibly upset when they felt the city attorney and commissioner Jon Maldonado had deceived the public about a cell tower ordinance.
“People will get… will get what they deserve,” Vigneault said at the time. The cell tower ordinance, with concerns from the couple over fire hazards from 5G small cells, which are attached to utility poles, was negotiated for over a year, with mutually agreed language over “mandatory” setbacks settled with a letter from Maldonaldo used as proof of the intent for the ordinance.
“It’s still shocking because I don’t consider myself a criminal,” Mones said Monday. “I’m absolutely not a criminal.”
“Definitely, I was upset about the way they handled it,” Vigneault said in the same interview. “But I have no intention to threaten anyone in my community, including my local government.”
Vigneault says he meant that karma would come around, not a physical threat. We asked Maldonado about the exchange. He says the discourse at that and many other meetings is getting out of hand.
“As a retired federal law enforcement official, I’m trained to deal with personal threats,” he said. “I would say without getting into details that certain comments were made that could be perceived as a direct threat.”
“I’m just asking if you’re planning on attending tonight,” Duran continues in her March 24th encounter.
“Maybe,” Mones replies. “Why do I have to?… I don’t have to tell you.”
Mones and Vigneault say the stop at their house at the next commission meeting was the real warning.
“It was right before the commission meeting, coming up that night,” she says. “It did feel like they wanted to intimidate me to not go, and I think that’s an overuse of their authority and their power.”
Maldonado is now suggesting the city create a new code of conduct for commission meetings and propose a workshop this summer to discuss it.