The City Council of Poteet in Texas took only ten minutes to to vote unanimously to oust the already convicted sex offender mayor Lino Donato from the mayor's office. The Poteet City Council declared Mayor Lino Donato's position vacant because he has missed three consecutive council meetings, city attorney Frank Garza said.
The Associated Press reports that the agency could not locate a telephone number for Lino Donato. The agency wrote that Donato did not attend the meeting. The San Antonio Express-News has left messages on Donato's phone, but has not heard from him.
Earlier in the day, Lino Donato was released on $200,000 bond from the Atascosa County Jail. He was arrested last week on child sex charges involving a girl younger than 14. Now already the former mayor faces charges of aggravated sexual assault, indecency with a child by contact and attempted indecency with a child by contact.
The new charges are unrelated to the charges Donato pleaded guilty to in October 2007: two counts of indecency by exposure and no contest to one count of indecency by contact. He accepted deferred adjudication and probation and was required to register as a sex offender.
The attorney of Lino Donato, Gary Churak, is appealing the first set of charges and said Donato is innocent of the new charges.
Donato's probation requires him to stay more than 1,000 feet from places where children congregate. That means he must also stay out of city hall because it is within 200 feet of a youth center.
Poteet is a city in Atascosa County, Texas. The population was 3,305 at the 2000 census. The median income for a household in the city was $25,329, and the median income for a family was $27,949.
Mayor Pro Tem Fred Catala becomes the acting mayor of Poteet, said City Attorney Frank Garza, and Catala presided over the speedy meeting in which the council declared the seat of Lino Donato vacant after he logged three consecutive absences.
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