Marshfield Common Council Approves Removing "No Firearms" Sign From City Hall

Thursday, July 14th, 2022 -- 11:00 AM

(Mike Warren, Hub City Times) Marshfield’s city hall is no longer a gun-free zone.

According to Mike Warren with the Hub City Times, the Marshfield Common Council on July 12 voted 6-4 to remove a sign that reads, “No firearms or weapons in establishment” from the front door of the facility.

New Alderman Mike O’Reilly requested the issue be placed on the agenda for a vote, after the Common Council twice voted in recent years to keep the sign, and weapons ban, in place.

Alderman Nick Poeschel, a retired Marshfield police officer, again expressed his opposition to removing the sign, as he did in 2021. Rebecca Spiros, O’Reilly, Tom Witzel, Adam Fischer, Peter Hendler and Brian Varsho voted in favor of the sign’s removal.

Varsho, who voted in October, 2021 to leave the sign in place the last time the council addressed the issue, this time voted to get rid of the sign, thus giving O’Reilly’s motion just enough votes for passage.

The last time the subject was voted on, the motion failed 5-5, and the tiebreaker, the Mayor, didn’t exist at the time. Had Varsho not changed his vote this time around, the Common Council would have again deadlocked on the matter, and the tiebreaker, Mayor Lois TeStrake, was not present for the meeting.

Third-district representative Natasha Tompkins, who joined Ed Wagner, Poeschel and Mike Feirer in voting against the sign’s removal, wondered about opening up city hall to employees possibly carrying weapons into the workplace.

Coincidentally enough, the change, to remove the sign, now contradicts a city policy prohibiting employees from bringing weapons into the workplace. “Since the meeting, it’s come to light that we have a personnel policy that specifically prohibits that,” City Administrator Steve Barg told Hub City Times during a July 13 post-Council interview.

“So right now, we have a conflict between the signs that are about to come down and the policy that says no employee at city hall may carry,” Barg added. “So, what we’re gonna have to do is bring this forward to the Finance, Budget and Personnel Committee, and see if their intent has been to also modify that personnel policy to allow employees to carry. I think the answer to that will be ‘yes’, but again, we have to remove that conflict in the personnel policy. Right now we’re kind of in limbo. Even though the sign comes down, it says right in the employee manual that you cannot carry.”

Furthermore, Barg conducted a rather informal email survey of employees when the issue first went before the council in the fall of 2019, and found that “a slight preference was shown for keeping the signage,” according to a Nov. 7, 2019 memo from Barg to members of the council at the time.

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