A Texas mayor who told city residents impacted by winter power outages that “no one owes you or your family anything” has resigned as mayor.
Colorado City Mayor Tim Boyd announced his resignation in a post on his Facebook page Tuesday. City manager David Hoover confirmed the resignation to NBC News.
In a since deleted Facebook post Tuesday morning, Boyd told residents to “sink or swim” and stop “looking for a damn handout.”
“No one owes you or your family anything,” he wrote, “nor is it the local governments responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim, it’s your choice!”
He continued: “The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn hand out!”
In his typo-filled post, Boyd reportedly told people to “step up” and come up with their own “game plan” to stay warm after the power was cut to over 4 million homes in Texas on Tuesday.
“If you don’t have electricity you step up and come up with a game plan to keep your family warm and safe. If you have no water you deal with out and think outside of the box to survive and supply water to your family,” he continued. “If you were sitting at home in the cold because you have no power and are sitting there waiting for someone to come rescue you because your lazy is direct result of your raising! Only the strong will survive and the week will perish [sic].”
Boyd concluded the message by saying “Get off your ass and take care of your own family!”, KTXS reports.
Hours later, Boyd posted a follow-up message announcing his resignation:
“I would never want to hurt the elderly or anyone that is in true need of help to be left to fend for themselves,” he reportedly wrote. “I was only making the statement that those folks that are too lazy to get up and fend for themselves but are capable should not be dealt a handout.”
Boyd added that his wife was laid off from her school job for defending him.
“The anger and harassment you have caused my wife and family is so undeserved…. my wife was laid off of her job based off the association people gave to her and the business she worked for. She’s a very good person and was only defending me! But her to have to get fired from her job over things I said out of context is so horrible [sic].”
Millions of Texans are still without water or electric as winter storms brought snow, ice and record low temperatures to the state.
