If you are searching for the Niles City government’s page on Facebook, you won’t find it.

That’s because city leaders decided to suspend the page Monday.

“It’s a decision we didn’t want to make, but unfortunately the Facebook page was being used by some people in the community to slander some of our staff members,” said Mayor Mike McCauslin. “It’s one thing to criticize the council and our policies, and the direction we are taking the city… that’s fine — we have no problem with that. But the personal attacks were both unwarranted and uncalled for.”

The decision to take down the page was made Friday by the Mayor and City Administrator Ric Huff after discussions with city staff. The page was taken down Monday evening.

McCauslin said the page could be brought back. City officials are currently looking at ways to keep abusive language off the Facebook page.

“We hope we will be able to figure all this out and bring it back because it was a phenomenal resource for the community,” he said. “We really liked having it because we could put a message out regarding something going on in the community instantaneously.”

Diane Bass, who ran the page for the city, said the page had 468 likes after launching the second week of January.