Residents put the mic in their own hands to take leaders to task via social media sites
By John Pacenti
Elected leaders routinely reach out to Delray Beach resident Ingrid Lee through text or social media. The mayor has met her for coffee to discuss issues.
Lee, administrator of the Facebook group Delray Matters, said it used to be that you had to be a white, wealthy landowner to have access to elected officials to have power and influence. “Now with social media, anybody can have discourse within the community and with leadership and be anybody,” Lee said.
In places as politically active as Boca Raton, Delray Beach and Lantana, officials may control the microphone at government meetings, but residents have found other ways to have their say and influence decisions.
They are frequently turning to social media and its kissing cousins — newsletters, blogs, etc. — to influence, interact and participate in their local government. The flip side of this free-for-all marketplace is that these vehicles can be agenda-driven, censoring opposing viewpoints and allowing personal attacks and proliferating misinformation.
In one case involving Lantana elected officials, violence was endorsed, the vice mayor says.
The proliferation of social media sites focused on municipal government is so profound that it’s hard to track them all down. Whether they influence the government is a matter of debate that reflects the polarizing politics of the day.
In other words, you either love it or loathe it.
Besides Delray Matters on Facebook, there are Delray Raw and the Delray Beach Community Forum. Then there is the anonymously published Delray Gazette, which often has incendiary articles that are picked up by Delray Matters and other groups.
Into the mouth of the rat
In Boca Raton, there are the websites BocaFirst.org and 4Boca.com. The Nextdoor app for Boca Raton can get into the municipal weeds. Right now, the hot topic is the redevelopment of the city’s 30-acre downtown campus — and the “Save Boca” opposition movement.
Former Boca Raton City Council candidate Brian Stenberg posted on Nextdoor on July 23: “Hearing the constant ‘Government Campus/Memorial Park’ drumbeat is tiring, but it’s an important point in Boca Raton’s history. It’s about the difference between cost and value. It’s about our relationship with our local government.”
Boca Raton resident Holli Sutton says she has used Nextdoor to organize the resident opposition that killed the construction of an assisted living facility next to her home in Palmetto Park Terrace — a proposal rejected by the City Council.
“Nextdoor was essential in helping us spread the word,” said Sutton, who is now building opposition to a proposed condominium complex for the same space by the same developer.
Digital marketer Jason Pelish, who publishes 4Boca.com, says he knows more than he would like about social media influencing local government. Pelish worked with Al Zucaro when the politician produced BocaWatch before running for Boca Raton mayor.
However, the BocaWatch that Pelish first encountered gave true meaning to Boca’s translated name: rat’s mouth. A schism occurred when Pelish, as he tells it, tried to clean up BocaWatch from “nasty and really just mean people hurting genuine political dialogue.”
Zucaro shuttered BocaWatch after he lost his second mayoral bid in 2018 — then tried to start it up again a half-year later — while Pelish eventually started 4Boca. That site aggregates links to relevant content from other publications that focus on Boca Raton.
Meanwhile, BocaFirst.org publishes original content and addresses the issues of the city head-on. In July, the site addressed such in-the-weeds topics as the city losing its director of mobility and coverage of the Citizens’ Pedestrian and Bikeway Advisory Board meeting,
Pelish relishes his role as government watchdog, saying that he is good at knowing the inside scoop at City Hall. “When they see me coming, they run, basically,” he laughs.
But Pelish says this intersection between social media and local government is the Wild West, especially where people are using Facebook groups, blogs and other matters to post anonymously.
“There are a number of anonymous people on social media — Facebook, particularly, not so anonymous on Nextdoor — who really control, for the most part, what gets exposed, what doesn’t get exposed, what gets discussed and what doesn’t get discussed online.”
Anonymous potshots
Anonymously run Facebook groups, websites and newsletters allow certain candidates to get their messages across while censoring others, Pelish said.
“I think it is textbook campaign fraud,” he said.
Delray Beach Mayor Tom Carney said he also has a problem with anonymous social media posts and newsletters.
“I like to know who is writing it so I can understand the context of the comment, because you can have a political objective and post something anonymously,” he said.
The administrators who allow anonymous posts, Carney said, are taking a risk. “Freedom of speech does not protect you from a defamation lawsuit,” he said.
Zucaro, now years away from making waves with Boca Watch, said his site was nothing like the social media free-for-all that is present today.
“I think we simply were attempting to provide an information vehicle and provide a thesis for people to have their voice heard,” he said. “It was very effective, but it clearly wasn’t used in the manner that social media is being used in today’s world.”
A post on Nextdoor by this reporter asking what residents of Boca Raton think in regards to social media’s influence on municipal government got diverse responses.
“Nextdoor is full of mostly naysayers who don’t know all of the facts and jump to very lopsided conclusions. Then the misinformation spreads and spreads,” said one resident.
Another said, “It definitely changes municipal gov’t. It can be used by the gov’t to sway the public. A savvy citizen can do the same thing.” This was disputed by a woman who said, “I don’t believe it influences gov’t in the least.”
The Delray scoop
In his protracted ongoing contract battle with Delray Beach’s police union, Carney wanted to get an opinion on the reach of the city’s health center.
Did he call a doctor, a patient, or a director at City Hall? No, Carney called Lee of Delray Matters. The mayor said he didn’t call Lee as the administrator of the Facebook group, but she says, “He has called for other reasons and met for coffee” on different topics.
When it comes to scoops, Delray Matters posted in June a redacted portion of a whistleblower complaint filed by Jeri Pryor, the city’s director of neighborhood and community services, before any television or newspaper did. Pryor’s complaint against City Manager Terrence Moore and Vice Mayor Rob Long was found “unsubstantiated” by an independent investigator.
Pryor has told the city attorney that the publication of the whistleblower complaint in Delray Matters, as well as The Coastal Star and the Sun Sentinel, has led to public attacks that have contributed to a hostile work environment.
Rodney Mayo, a well-known restaurateur who claims Pryor’s code division has targeted him, sent another screed to the media in July titled, “The City of Delray Beach has Lost Its Mind!” Delray Matters ran it all.
Lee weighed in: “Why would a brand new Code Mgr target a business when she is new to the City?”
The latest edition of the Delray Gazette was also posted in Lee’s Facebook group. The publication is anonymously written and has the motto, “Because you CAN handle the truth.” Identifying the person or persons behind the newsletter is like playing a local game of Clue, and everyone is sure who has a firm grip on the pen — the name just changes depending on to whom you speak.
“Buckle up, because if the mayor has his way with the budget cuts, Delray Beach is about to get a whole lot less fun,” said one op-ed piece in the Gazette on Carney’s proposed budget cuts that would include some signature events.
Instant interaction
Gregg Weiss, who runs the Delray Beach Community Forum, said the blogs, Facebook groups, and newsletters give residents something that traditional media failed to deliver.
“Reporters were always really good about talking about government issues, in other words, issues within the cities. But where I feel they fell short, and this is just my opinion, was engaging citizens,” Weiss said.
Social media, especially hyperlocal groups, interact with people in the moment, whether it’s a lost dog or wallet, or municipal issues.
“Somebody has an issue with code enforcement? You know, they get solutions and answers,” Weiss said. “It’s very communal.”
Vice Mayor Long said he was one of the first to get into the newsletter game to reach his constituents. But he also sued former Planning and Zoning Board Chairman Chris Davey over a post on social media.
“I stay deliberately out of the groups because they are so overwhelmingly negative,” Long said. “And unfortunately, I think it creates these silos, and it creates these factions. These factions may already exist, but I think they actually end up getting strengthened, oftentimes by these Facebook groups that share a lot of disinformation.”
Filling a void
Former Delray Beach Mayor Shelly Petrolia has battled the social media horde and won. Petrolia ousted the nonprofit that ran Old School Square, which split the hoi polloi in the city right down the middle, earning her all kinds of shade and vitriol on social media.
“I think social media has been around for a long time, and what it has done is, I hate to say this, but it has somewhat started to fill the gap that we’ve lost with a lot of our news coverage,” she said.
Zucaro echoed that sentiment: “Boca Raton is in the middle of nowhere. I mean The Post barely covers it and the Sun Sentinel, I don’t think they even think it exists.”
Seasoned journalist Randy Schultz has been filling the gap with his City Watch items in Boca Magazine, but he can tiptoe the line between commentary and news. He was not a fan of Petrolia’s ousting the nonprofit that ran Old School Square.
Petrolia said she started a newsletter when she was in office “that was very popular” to address issues in City Hall that were not being covered by television stations and newspapers.
Carney has a newsletter and tries to use it not only to sway public sentiment but also the commissioners. He torched them not once but twice in July for not suggesting cuts to the budget. It didn’t work; they voted against him.
In June, Carney blasted the Police Benevolent Association in his newsletter — which is sent out via email — for wanting an increase in retirement benefits, saying the money would go only to the upper echelon and not the rank-and-file troops.
The Lantana threat
Lantana Mayor Karen Lythgoe and Vice Mayor Kem Mason take a different approach. They want as little to do with social media as possible, finding it toxic.
It’s hard to blame them.
Mason said that, in 2021, a comment on a Facebook group endorsed throwing sulfuric acid on some elected officials. Mason, first elected in 2022, said the group administrator endorsed the post.
The former firefighter called out the post at a council meeting during public comments. “Bullies are only stopped if you stand up to them,” he said.
Mason said he feels people lose their civility on social media, emboldened to attack their government and elected officials.
“[They] feel as though they’re protected behind their screen or their keyboard,” he said. “If people had to face the person that they’re criticizing, they probably would be more civilized.”
Lythgoe in February addressed misinformation on social media during a council meeting. She says social media is a bad method for residents to interact with their government.
“The people who seem to have the most negative things to say are not people who interact with any of us,” she told The Coastal Star. “We do not see them at the meetings.”
Lythgoe says she gets frustrated when seeing the misinformation online about the town she loves and her initial reaction is like a lot of people’s — to respond with equal venom.
“I was on Nextdoor and there was this guy who said Lantana was so disappointing. And I was like, ‘Whoa, Karen. Don’t. Don’t.’ And then I politely and nicely said, ‘You need to get your facts straight.’”
Mason said he stays off social media altogether — so anybody using it to criticize him is usually wasting time, though some comments trickle back to him. “I’ve been called a liar, a bully and a cheat on there,” he said.
His campaign staff had to beg him to use social media when he ran for office.
“I don’t do Facebook. I don’t do Twitter, or X. I don’t do Tinder,” he said, laughing.
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