A debate over what flags can be displayed along city streets is stirring passions in a small city in California’s Central Valley.
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Tuesday’s meeting of the Orland City Council was packed by residents wanting to weigh in on a request to allow Mexican flags to be erected “during significant Hispanic holidays.” After hours of public comment, the five-member council declined to make a decision, instead directing the city attorney to draft options for a policy concerning flags, Chico TV station KNVN reported.
The issue burst into the public discourse after the Orland Flag Society announced it would line a downtown street with U.S. flags on the day of the memorial for slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, said Orland.News.
The day after that memorial, the newly created Mexican Heritage Flag Society submitted its request to Orland that it be allowed to use existing flagpole holes along Walker Street to display Mexico’s flag on certain holidays.
Those holes “appear to be” in the Caltrans right-of-way, the council agenda said, and they have been used for about 25 years by the volunteers of the Orland Flag Society to put up U.S. flags on patriotic holidays. In a social media post, the group implied that the flags set for Kirk were in the category of non-holiday displays warranted by “something important.”
Video of Tuesday’s council meeting showed a standing-room-only crowd overseen by city police officers. The debate pitted those who say Orland’s largely Hispanic community should be allowed to display “heritage flags” against those who oppose the display of any other nation’s flag.
The creation of a policy concerning flags would require Orland to decide whether such displays constitute “government speech” or a “public forum,” said the analysis in the council agenda, adding, “If treated as a public forum, the City must remain viewpoint-neutral.”
As an example of the government-speech model, it referred to Manteca, which states that flag displays on city-owned property are not intended as a forum for free expression. It prohibits flags of other nations and allows commemorative flags only if the city manager authorizes them as reflecting “the City’s official speech.”
Orland, along Interstate 5 about 20 miles west of Chico, is an agricultural community of about 8,500 people. In the last census, more than half its residents identified as Hispanic or Latino.