I recently watched a video on Instagram where a Florida official calls out their mayor for not taking the right precautions and decisions to this pandemic. The video is called “‘You failed to act’: Florida official calls out mayor over utility shut-offs amid COVID-19 outbreak,” which can be watched on The Washington Post.
The video features Omari Hardy, the Lake Worth Beach Commissioner, exploding at Mayor Pam Triolo. In the beginning, Hardy wanted to be given a turn to speak his thoughts and interrupted another person while they were speaking so he was called rude. This caused him to get angry and scream about how it was crazy that he was the rude one when one of the men in the room turned off people’s utilities in the midst of this pandemic.
After I heard Hardy say that, I was genuinely shocked that Florida still turned people’s utilities off after knowing that millions of people had become unemployed due to the pandemic.
Earning money to pay off bills was never an easy task to do, but when one is unemployed, it becomes more difficult to accomplish. I am angry that they did not take the effects of the pandemic into consideration and am disgusted by the decision they made because they chose to shut off people’s utilities knowing that people millions of people were filing for unemployment because of the virus.
As the video proceeds, Hardy continues to scream and says the Mayor and them should have been working on trying to find solutions last week. He also claims they shut down people’s utilities and potentially took others’ last paycheck since people are losing their jobs and they do not have income coming in. He accuses Mayor Triolo of not caring about the people, which I agree with. When he said the Mayor did not care about the people I definitely thought about that too. People are already scared because of the virus and are panicking because of losing their jobs. The mayor should have made it a top priority to find solutions and ease the worries of the people.
Hardy states, “You don’t care about that, you didn’t want to meet, but every other year you go around and beg people for their votes. You care more about your relationship with that guy than you care about the relationship with the people who don’t go to work…”
Hardy made an excellent point against Triolo. She goes around begging for votes to get re-elected, but in a dire situation like this she does not show compassion for people. This shows that Mayor Triolo has poor leadership skills. This is the time when people need leadership the most and right now she can not provide that for the people of Lake Worth, Florida.
There are currently multiple petitions on Change.org to have her step down from being mayor. One description of a petition says, “…She is not for the people she is supposed to serve. She should be demanding to keep the lights on for the people of her town and not telling the only person sticking up for us ‘You’re Done.'” She should definitely step down if she cannot lead these people through these hard times. Instead, she should be finding solutions to ease the hardship that people are going through right now.