The City of Hayward and its mayor are being extremely contrite after a crazily inappropriate tweet went out on the city's official Twitter account Tuesday morning trying to get residents to attend a city council meeting in which the potential for sanctuary city status was to be discussed. "Let's Taco Bout It" reads the tweet, screencapped above by KRON 4, complete with an illustration of a taco. And if I need to spell out why this is so wrong, then we're done here.
"I don't really know what to say in response," says Mayor Barbara Halliday to ABC 7. "This was absolutely inappropriate."
City spokesperson Chuck Finnie tells the station that it was actually just a thoughtless mistake involving a meme/image the city has used before to encourage dialogue at public meetings. "A really unfortunate mistake that came to our attention this morning and we're really embarrassed about it and upset about it," Finnie tells ABC 7.
According to the Chronicle, Finnie said in follow-up email to city council members that the city manager would take “appropriate follow-up actions with the staff involved."
As KRON 4 notes, the tweet went out at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, and had been taken down and replaced with the following apology by 1 p.m.
We sincerely apologize for the inappropriate tweet about tonight's City Council meeting and potential Sanctuary City declaration.
— City of Hayward (@cityofhayward) June 6, 2017
A community task force convened in February had already recommended that the council vote in favor of becoming a sanctuary city, and only one out of 40 speakers during the public comment portion of Tuesday's meeting spoke against the idea.
Per ABC 7, said Reverand Maria Cristina Vlassidis, "Sanctuary conjures images of safety a place where someone who is in danger or afraid can seek refuge."
Despite the Twitter gaffe, the new sanctuary policy passed almost unanimously, and Hayward now joins other Bay Area cities including San Francisco and Berkeley in defying the Trump administration's orders regarding compliance with federal immigration authorities and non-violent offenders.