Tim Boyd, the now-ex-mayor of Colorado City TX, is in hot water.
Or he would be, if there were more of it available in the frigid Lone Star State this week.
After a deadly Arctic blast hit early Tuesday, residents of Colorado City, a town of about 4,000 in the West Texas oil patch, turned to a community Facebook page to voice concern about the lack of electricity and running water, and offering to help their neighbors get through the emergency.
“But when Colorado City’s mayor (Boyd) chimed in, it was to deliver a less-than-comforting message: The local government had no responsibility to help out its citizens, and only the tough would survive,” reports the Washington Post.
“No one owes you [or] your family anything,” Boyd wrote in a now-deleted post. “Sink or swim, it’s your choice!”
“Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish [sic],” he ranted.
And a final rebuke: “I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!”
Boyd later posted that he had already resigned as the town’s mayor and so was speaking only as a private citizen. He also claimed his words were taken “out of context” and he wasn’t condemning the helpless or the elderly.
As of Wednesday morning, well over 3 million Texans were still without power and many without water: some gathered buckets of snow to melt and flush toilets; others, lucky enough to have fireplaces, burned belongings to stay warm, reported the Daily Beast.
State officials, including Gov. Greg Abbott, admit they can’t say when power will be fully restored, but for some the crisis could stretch into next week.
Community response to Boyd’s outburst was negative and sometimes fierce. Boyd claims his family has suffered “anger and harassment” — and his wife has lost her job with the local school system, reported heavy.com.
Apparently realizing — at last — that his hateful language was harming his family, Boyd posted this:
“I ask that you each understand I never meant to speak for the city of Colorado City or Mitchell county! I was speaking as a citizen as I am NOT THE MAYOR anymore. I apologize for the wording and ask that you please not harass myself or my family anymore!”
“The controversy highlighted how one of the worst winter storms in decades is testing the limits of the embrace of self-sufficiency and rugged individualism in Texas,” says the Post.
“The state’s decision to skirt federal oversight by operating its own power grid [isolated from outsiders] is one of the main reasons that close to 3.3 million residents in Texas still lacked electricity by early Wednesday morning, while outages in other hard-hit states had dwindled to less than one-tenth of that size.”