Texas mayor said he resigned after writing ‘only the strong will survive’ amid the cold and power outages

The mayor of a western Texas town said on Tuesday that he had already resigned after being widely condemned for writing on Facebook that people who suffer in the cold without power should not ask local governments for help.

Tim Boyd, who was mayor of Colorado City, made his original post and full of typos on Tuesday morning, writing that “no one owes you, your family; nor is it the responsibility of the local government to support you in difficult times like this! … The city and the county, together with the energy suppliers or any other service, owe you NOTHING! “

Boyd went on for a long time, saying that he was “sick” of people looking for alms and that the current situation is “unfortunately the product of a socialist government”.

“Only the strong will survive and the weak will make a parish,” he wrote.

The post is no longer available, but several screenshots show this and a follow-up post he made several hours later, in which he said he kept his feelings on his first missive, but would have kept his mouth shut or written his message better if he could do things again.

“I would never want to hurt the elderly or anyone who really needs help by being left to fend for themselves,” said Boyd. “I was just stating that those people who are too lazy to stand up and defend themselves, but are capable, shouldn’t receive alms.”

He apologized for the original text of the post, but said the harassment his family received as a result was unnecessary.

Boyd also wrote that he had already resigned as mayor of Colorado City, a city of 4,000 people about 370 kilometers west of Dallas, and that he spoke only as a citizen, not as an elected official. It was not clear when exactly he resigned; a City Council agenda posted on the city’s website showed that he was scheduled to lead last week’s meeting.

Data from Oncor Electric Delivery, which serves about 4,400 customers in the Colorado city zip code, showed that 1,304 of them were out of power at 9pm on Tuesday. The temperature was 23 degrees.