In an explosive letter to all the people in a small Florida town last Friday, the mayor quit suddenly after describing a pattern of “corruptive behavior” in the town’s government.
“This small town is going in the wrong direction,” Jim Rostek, who used to be mayor of Madeira Beach, told Fox 13 on Wednesday. “I’m sorry I have to leave. It’s good for my health. Please keep fighting. I’ll always do what I can to help you. Do the right thing again, please.
According to the letter from June 14 that Fox News Digital looked at, Rostek’s claims were about City Manager Robin Ignacio Gomez and how he enforced the law in a “discretionary” and “discriminatory” way.
“I’m sorry to leave. But as a city manager, I can’t be or take part in Gomez’s dishonest actions, like lying, going around in loops, giving “some” special treatment, or unfairly enforcing the law. “As well as the daily waste of tax money and trying to explain it away,” Rostek wrote. “Some will get to the pearly gates in the end, but others won’t.” Some people don’t always do what’s moral and right, but I always do.”
The resigning mayor said that Gomez ignored Rostek’s requests to make a policy on life jackets, a policy on smoking, and a formal rule against cellphone use for city workers who are driving or working on city boats and vehicles.
“I had a resident take pictures of the code enforcement boat, with people riding around on it doing their job, I guess, no life jackets on,” Rostek said. “The rule against smoking… I see a few of them smoking in city cars.” The government has rules about that. He doesn’t want to follow the rules.”
Rostek was upset that he saw city sanitation workers chatting while holding onto the back of a truck with one hand.
“Gomez is very well-liked by employees because, in my mind, it’s ‘Camp Run Amok,'” he told me. “We’re supposed to set an example for the public.”
Rostek also says that his former coworkers used legally legal but morally wrong ways to handle money. He says that instead of putting out a Request for Proposals, they negotiated various line-item contracts for less money so that the commission wouldn’t have to approve projects worth more than $30,000.
A deal for Gomez to leave the city of Clarkston, Georgia, was attached to the email from June 14. The paper, which is dated September 7, 2021, talks about Gomez’s resignation as city manager and says that he and city officials can’t talk about his job with other people.
Rostek told Fox 13 that he is very strict about ethics, safety, and the city’s responsibility. He also said that the stress of dealing with his former coworkers caused him to have several health scares.
Rosstek said, “I told him that talk is cheap.” “I said, ‘You need to have policy to back up what you’ve told them because when it comes time for a lawsuit, we’re not going to have any ammunition to substantiate,’” he told the news site. “If you don’t get the small things right, what about the big things?”
Further, “God only knows what else is going on,” he said. “You don’t know what you don’t know until you start looking and digging deeper.”
“While entitled to his opinions, the city has provided answers and resolutions to the comments although not completely supported/agreed/understood by Mr. Rostek,” Gomez said. “It is unfortunate that the disagreements and misunderstandings of city processes and policies by Mr. Rostek led him to state/list claims of corruption, which are simply baseless and false.”
“We continue to perform our daily tasks and responsibilities under federal, state, county, and city laws/ordinances/statutes in the most ethical manner,” he said more.
Anne-Marie Brooks, who used to be a city commissioner, has taken over as mayor of Madeira Beach while Rostek is away.
Gomez wrote that next week, city officials would hold an extra meeting to find someone to fill her empty commission spot.
TBN Weekly says that commissioners just decided to keep Gomez’s contract until 2028.
However, Rostek told Fox 13 that he hopes “someone at the state level makes contact with [him]” about the small town’s alleged corruption.
Source: Fox News
