By: Sharon Aron Baron
Before she would resign, Commissioner Patte Atkins-Grad successfully managed to pull a few more bucks out of the City of Tamarac.
Commissioner Atkins-Grad couldn’t gracefully step down. In the letter sent to the city hours before the September 11th dedication ceremony, she demanded $8,000 “payable to me personally.”
In her letter to the commission, she never mentions that the recall effort and the impending election would soon be her demise. Her exit strategy was her “serious medical issue.”
The serious medical issue was a “bout” with skin cancer that had to be removed from her nose—a simple outpatient procedure. However, like everything else in her life, she milked it for all it was worth.
$8,000 buckaroos.
Patte didn’t miss two weeks of commission meetings because she was getting chemotherapy or on bed rest at the hospital. No, she was MIA because she had a Band-Aid on her nose.
Spotted driving around town and at Home Depot, she flew to Colorado to visit her husband’s new grandchild while the commission was in budget meetings.
Meanwhile, the $8,000 demand made residents angry.
I just want to know why it is legal for her to extort money from the city in exchange for her resignation – which is exactly what she’s doing.” Said Tamarac resident Jeanne Megel.
If they give her a deal they’d better be ready to answer to a lot of people and I’m one of them!” Said Susan Emert.
Recall volunteers felt differently and thought it was a much better deal than paying an election expense.
Patte had hoodwinked us all again, starting months before her trial after convincing her neighbors that decisions she made in prior years were the result of a mild stroke, to her attempt to get out of standing for trial by claiming she was mentally incompetent.
Then when she was on trial, there was her defense that she was too politically naive to know that she was getting a gift from land developers Bruce and Shawn Chait, when all along, she knew it was just another “deal” she had brokered.
On Thursday evening, the mayor and three commissioners went into a closed-door meeting with their attorney and voted to give Patte her final deal. The mayor recused herself from the vote due to a conflict of interest.
This resignation would have never happened if it weren’t for the recall volunteers and the residents of District Two who signed the petition. Patte saw the “writing on the petition sheets” and knew she was no longer welcome as a commissioner in her district. The election would have been one more embarrassment as residents would have flooded the polls to vote her out.
Good riddance.
