SALISBURY — The debate over how to update the city’s decades-old special permit ordinance is not over quite yet.

In a 3-2 vote, the City Council decided Tuesday that its special committee tasked with updating the ordinance — run by Councilmen David Post and Brian Miller — needs to spend more time working out the kinks in the update.

Mayor Karen Alexander, Mayor Pro Tem Maggie Blackwell and Councilman Kenny Hardin voted to table the issue. Miller and Post abstained.

In the discussion before the vote, Miller said that the parts of the ordinance that still need work are primarily in a section that they had not been tasked with updating, one involving freedom of speech.

“You guys didn’t ask us to talk about free speech; you asked us to talk about special permits,” Miller said. “The special events part of this, I think we have consensus. I think we’ve got about as good as we’re going to get with the special events piece, and it’s fully baked.”

But Blackwell disagreed.

“With all due respect, it’s half-baked,” Blackwell said.

She pointed out that “we didn’t have one single citizen come up and say, ‘I love this.’ And several came and said, ‘I don’t.’”

Seven people spoke during the public hearing part of the discussion; six of them said they were concerned about the freedom of speech section in the ordinance.

Several of them asked that the council either table the update until the freedom of speech section could also be updated or send it to another special committee for further review.

The freedom of speech portion includes rules that say people must be 15 feet apart when protesting at a special event and that they cannot protest anywhere in public without a permit.

Post and Miller pointed out that since they were not tasked with changing that part of the ordinance, all the concerns raised had been in the city’s ordinance for decades.

Miller said the only thing they did add was a “spontaneous demonstration” clause, which would allow people to protest for 24 hours without having a permit.

“And many of the folks who have spoken with me have said that’s actually an improvement,” Miller said.

Post said if the ordinance update was tabled for the time being, the problems that people have with the free speech part would still be there and the spontaneous demonstration clause would not be added.

“Don’t throw away the child with the bathwater,” Post said.

Blackwell and Hardin both questioned what the rush was in passing the updated ordinance.

“Why can’t it wait until everything’s ready to go, until it’s a solid law?” Blackwell asked.

“I would hate to compromise effectiveness … for expediency,” Hardin said. “I would feel more comfortable having everything (settled) instead of passing with contingencies.”

After more than an hour of discussion, to council voted to come back to the discussion at a later meeting. It did not specify when that would be.

Other items on the agenda included:

• Three members of the Salisbury Indivisible advocacy group — Emily Ford, Allison Parker and Renee MacNutt — asked council members to again consider moving the Fame Civil War monument.

“We are not asking for history to be erased,” Ford said. “In fact, we are asking for Fame to be viewed with historical accuracy and context.”

Betty Jo Hardy, a member of the governing board of the North Carolina Council of Churches, also asked the council to consider removing the monument.

• Dixonville-Lincoln Memorial Task Force Chairwoman Emily Perry, former City Planner Lynn Raker and current City Planner Alyssa Nelson presented Phase 1 of the Dixonville Cemetery plan.

Raker said that Phase 2 would create an “interpretive walk” and a commemorative sculpture meant to give visitors a meditative experience in the cemetery. She said that is expected to be complete sometime in 2019.

Raker said that Phase 3 would be the rehabilitation of the Lincoln School. And she said that, although it is called Phase 3, the task force would “love to move forward with it as soon as possible.”

• City Manager Lane Bailey introduced the new executive director of Downtown Salisbury Inc., Larissa Harper.

Harper has worked previously for the city of Wilson and as executive director of the Kernersville Downtown Preservation and Development Council.

Harper’s first day is Monday.

Contact reporter Jessica Coates at 704-797-4222.