Residents are mounting the recall against Arthur Czyszczon after he sent lewd texts to a constituent.<\/p>\n
TREASURE ISLAND, Fla. \u2014 Last September, Treasure Island Commissioner Arthur Czyszczon tried to stop constituent Rick Matthew from reading a text Czyszczon sent him early in the morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy commissioner asked me, \u2018What is my wife, Kim, wearing\u2026?\u201d Matthew quoted during public comment at the next commissioner\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a private matter,\u201d Czyszczon interjected.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s not a private matter, it’s on a city phone,\u201d Matthew responded before continuing to read the text. \u201c’When can I clean your feet?’\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a reference to Jesus,\u201d Czyszczon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me finish,\u201d Matthew responded. \u201c’Kisses to Kim, first, then you second.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Mentioning Matthew\u2019s wife kick-started a movement called “100 women of Treasure Island” that sent a letter to the governor asking for Czyszczon’s removal, with no response.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Matthew said organizers of a recall passed their first hurdle in collecting enough signatures to continue the recall.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second phase will be a petition will be written with his rebuttal, and then 15% of the residents have to sign that,\u201d Matthew said. \u201cHe has time and again shown a path that he will not listen to the residents.\u201d<\/p>\n
But instead of writing that, Czyszczon instead sued Matthew, claiming he is the \u201cde facto\u201d chairman of the group, Treasure Island City Clerk Lisa-Marie Kennedy, and the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections, Julie Marcus, saying the recall is illegal.<\/p>\n
The complaint states: \u201cWhile the nonsensical text sent by Commissioner Czyszczon may be eccentric, perhaps even bizarre, it’s not grounds for removal.”<\/p>\n
10 Tampa Bay News sent a message to Czyszczon asking for additional comment and got no response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents are mounting the recall against Arthur Czyszczon after he sent lewd texts to a constituent. TREASURE ISLAND,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-110538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-st-pete","9":"tag-st-pete-headlines","10":"tag-st-pete-news","11":"tag-st-petersburg","12":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","13":"tag-st-petersburg-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}