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Pensacola News Journal Despite increasingly heated Milton City Council meetings that have seen some council members storm out of meetings, get in shouting matches with residents and other board members, and cause disruptions that can sidetrack meetings for hours, the council declined Thursday night to adopt a code of decorum and civility proposed by the mayor that sought to make meetings more peaceful and less contentious. The "Guiding Principals for Meetings within the City of Milton" document was created by Milton Mayor Heather Lindsay and put forth for council consideration at Thursday night's council meeting. The mayor hoped to get the council members to agree to adopt the document as a way to express "commonly shared values" by the city's public servants.
Howard Steele, a Milton resident, spoke to the council and said he was “vehemently opposed to the term ‘united community’ being used to describe the city of Milton.” Steele said the word, by definition, was loaded with political connotations and not appropriate to describe the diverse political viewpoints in the city of Milton. “I think definitions are important. … In this case, especially since we’re talking about a political body, the city of Milton and the council, I think the more appropriate definition (of the word ‘united’) is being joined together politically,” Steele said. “So I oppose the use of the word ‘united’ when it is used to describe the city of Milton.”