A clip of Lake Worth Beach city commissioner Omari Hardy lambasting Mayor Pam Triolo after dozens of residents had their power shut off during the coronavirus outbreak has gone viral.
According to the Palm Beach Post, an email was sent on March 18 to Triolo and the commissioners by city manager Michael Bornstein in order to "clarify and reaffirm" his authority to make and implement temporary changes to governance decisions. Hardy followed up on the email asking Bornstein to verify the process by which the city manager had been granted the power to make such decisions. Bornstein responded by turning down his request for an emergency meeting.
The next day, Hardy unleashed his fury in a fiery speech as the five-member commission met for a two-hour session, which was recorded and posted online.
“This is a banana republic is what you’re turning this place into with your so-called leadership,” Hardy shouted. “We should have been talking about this last week. We cut off people’s utilities this week and made them pay what could have been their last check — to us — to turn their lights on in a global health pandemic. But you don’t care about that. You didn’t want to meet.”
Hardy wanted city officials to immediately ban large public gatherings, eliminate shutting off of delinquent electric and water accounts, provide more protections for city workers and investigate who has lawful emergency powers.
Triolo followed the email by releasing a video on the city’s Facebook page announcing that Lake Worth Beach’s emergency management procedures dictate that the commission steps back and lets the city manager act as the executive officer to manage the city’s response while keeping the commission informed.
Hardy said that he had tried to arrange a special commission meeting for a week, but his requests were dismissed by Bornstein, according to The New York Times.
“I was angry. I wish that I hadn’t lost my cool,” Hardy, a former middle school civics teacher, told The Times. “I felt strongly that I needed to say the things I said, and the public needed to know how wrong this is. But I wish I hadn’t been yelling.”
Lake Worth Beach’s mayor didn’t take kindly to Hardy’s critiques. Triolo slammed the gavel repeatedly to recess the meeting and suppress him.
“Point of order! You are done. You’re done. You’re done. Disrespectful,” she said as she exited the courtroom, maintaining the argument from the other room.
Triolo, in her fourth term as mayor, said that his actions were tactics of intimidation and that he misrepresented the city’s case on utility shut-offs.
“He hijacked this meeting to talk about something that was not even on the budget,” she said. “He was aggressive and completely out of order. That snippet was taken out of context. It was damaging and gave our city a black eye.”
According to The Times, Bornstein acknowledged that service to a number of residents had been suspended earlier, but he said no utility shut-offs had taken place since a moratorium was announced on Wednesday. Those customers had already had their service restored and their fines reversed, he said.
The city later announced it would close its public golf course. But it left the beach, which attracts about 3,000 visitors daily, open. Gov. Ron DeSantis later ordered beaches closed in Broward and Palm Beach counties after public outcry and criticism.
