Delray Beach Mayor Shelly Petrolia Is MIA Again! This Time She’s Hiding From Reporters Asking About The Water Crisis

It appears that Delray Beach Mayor Shelly Petrolia is MIA again. This time it’s not some snub to the people of color in Delray Beach like it was earlier this month.

On Tuesday afternoon, the state of Florida announced they were slapping a multimillion-dollar fine on the city for making residents drink toilet water.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the state found that under Petrolia’s leadership the city withheld information from the state. the state also found that the city neglected to inform them when people got sick from drinking the water.

The mayor did attend Tuesday’s City Commission meeting. In addition, Petrolia was later overheard saying, “Well, I guess my re-election campaign is over.” 

After the commission meeting, Petrolia went AWOL. She has not been seen in public since Tuesday. The Petrolia campaign did send out an email to supporters essentially saying that everyone criticizing her is a liar. 

Lexi Nahl from CBS12 tried to talk to Petrolia and other city officials about the water crisis. However, sources at city hall say Petrolia dictated that no one was to speak to Nahl. Instead, employees were to refer Nahl to the City’s PR agency. 

Delray Beach Mayor Shelly Petrolia Is MIA Because She’s Afraid Of Facing Angry Mobs

“They been feeding ya dogshit! Been telling ya it’s Cream of Wheat!” – Jimmy Hoffa

I thought of this quote by the late Teamsters leader, Jimmy Hoffa when it was discovered Shelly Petrolia tried to cover up the Delray Beach water crisis.

To make matters worse she even openly lied to residents about its severity and then tried to cover it up during her entire tenure as mayor. 

Petrolia is currently running for re-election for mayor against scrappy newcomer Tracy Caruso. Petrolia’s campaign strategy of campaigning via emails from her home computer in her pajamas while sipping lattes seems to be failing. 

And it’s no wonder it’s failing. It has a creepy QAnon or Unabomber kind of vibe. People just aren’t receptive to a good old-fashioned door-knocking campaign.

So,w why is Petrolia running her campaign this way? Basically, it’s laziness and fear. Petrolia doesn’t want to hear from pissed off residents tell her to go to hell. Nor does she want to hear stories of how the toilet water she made them drink made them sick.

In addition, Petrolia went out of her way to make sure the water crisis never saw the light of day or public scrutiny.

Petrolia used her newfound political might within the Palm Beach County Democratic Party to chase people like former Commissioner Bill Bathurst out of Delray Beach politics and government. Bathurst tried to rally help from Tallahassee to solve the problem as a commissioner over a year ago. This irritated Petrolia. Bathurst came home to discover Petrolia recruited and was helping finance one of her cronies, Juli Casale to run against him in his next election.

All this to hide the water crisis. Why? So come election time she could take credit for solving a problem she helped create.