Holmes Beach City Commissioner Pat Morton resigned his seat during a meeting Feb. 11 at city hall. He made the following remarks, based on the meeting video:
I’ve been on the city commission for 22 years. I’ve always said when I become not happy with serving the commission, not enjoying it, I was going to resign.
And, after these last storms we had, how we got chastised, our commission, our mayor, our two officials over here, the chief and Chad (Minor), and the whole city of Holmes Beach, it is shameful what people said about us on the social media.
We tried to keep everything safe for the citizens of Holmes Beach.
The worst part of our community was the rental companies. Not all of them but a few of them come in here and chastise us for trying to put a moratorium in to protect the people around here.
So they fought and we went from the time we wanted to do it to a 30-day. … They still didn’t like it.
They complained about their staff and a lot of stuff was not going to get paid. The money these people make off of rentals, they could have paid their staff for at least a couple of weeks to help them out. But they chose not to do it. They chose to put people in the places so they could make money off the backs of our people out here.
I don’t appreciate that.
We’ve got some very, very fine residents living in this city of Holmes Beach and I’ve met a lot of them and I call them my extra family.
And, you know, so now, that being said, I’m going to resign from the city commission as of today.
And, I mean, it’s sad because, like I’ve said, I’ve enjoyed 22 years, well, 21 and a half years. And it’s done.
And you know, I got a very competent group here that’s still working with you. They got the people in mind.…
Our police department is one of the finest ones I’ve known of for a long time here since Chief (William) Tokajer took over.
Then we have our fire department up here — them people are totally awesome.
I mean we have an awesome group around in our city and I wish people would step back and take a look how they’re saying things about people that are supporting them to get things done for the city and them.
But a lot of them … if you go to the sites, it’s horrible what people were saying about us, how they wanted to get rid of us. All this stuff.
And we’re trying our best to do what we needed for the citizens.
So, like I say, after tonight, or this afternoon, I’m resigning my position on the city commission.
And, thank you.
