The mayor of a Florida community has resigned only months after he was elected, claiming there is more corruption than he can battle.
Former Madeira Beach Mayor Jim Rostek threw in the towel on Friday, citing abruptly “corruptive behavior” and pointing fingers at City Manager Robin Ignacio Gomez, who denies the allegations.
“What is going on with this small town is all wrong,” Rostek said, according to WTVT-TV.
“I am sorry that I have to walk away. It is for my health. Please keep up the fight. I will always try to have your back. Please continue to do what’s right,” Rostek said.
“The city manager refused to implement any policy. He said he would talk to them and I told him, ‘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 said. “If you don’t get the small things right, what about the big things?”
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Rostek said he was unable to put a dent in wasteful spending, fix the city’s procurement process and remedy what he called discriminatory enforcement.
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“God only knows what else is going on. You don’t know what you don’t know until you start looking and digging deeper,” he said.
“My hope out of all of this is someone at the state level makes contact with me, and I will show them what they have,” he said.
Gomez provided a statement to the TV news outlet.
“While entitled to his opinions, the city has provided answers and resolutions to the comments although not completely supported/agreed/understood by Mr. Rostek. 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 pursuant to federal, state, county, and city laws/ordinances/statutes in the most ethical manner,” Gomez said.
A letter Rostek distributed upon resigning said “with a city manager as such, I cannot be or have any part of Gomez’s corrupt behavior, talking in circles, lies, preferential treatment of ‘some’ or discriminatory enforcement practices. As well as the everyday wasting of the taxpayers’ money and trying to justify it,” according to Fox News.
“In the end, some will go up to the pearly gates and some won’t. I will always do what is ethical and correct, others not so much,” Rostek, who took office in April 2023, said.
In the letter, Rostek said Gomez would not establish policies regarding smoking in city vehicles, banning cell phone use in public vehicles, and wearing life jackets in city boats.
“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,” he said.
“The smoking policy … I see one or two of them smoking in city vehicles. There’s federal law about that stuff. He refuses to implement policy,” he said, adding that he saw sanitation workers holding the truck with one hand and texting with the other.
According to the St. Pete Catalyst, Rostek also claimed the request for proposal process was not followed on projects involving over $30,000 worth of work, saying smaller contracts were used to end-run the process. He said the process might be legal, but not ethical.
