The mayor of a small Pennsylvania borough is stepping down after sparking outrage by posting images on his Facebook page comparing President Barack Obama and his family to apes and referencing a noose, a newspaper reported.
The council of West York, a community less than 100 miles west of Philadelphia, voted unanimously on Monday to accept Mayor Charles Wasko's offer to resign, according to the York Daily Record.
Wasko's resignation will be effective on Oct. 21, with the president of the council filling out the rest of the mayor's term until an election next year, the newspaper reported. His second term will end in January 2017.
Wasko had resisted calls to step down earlier this month, after he was accused of racism for the images on his page. The West York Borough Council voted 7-0 on Oct. 3 to censure him over the posts -- which compared the Obama family to monkeys and joked about lynching the president.
There have been instances across the country of government officials spreading racist images and jokes since Obama took office in 2009 as the first African-American U.S. president. In 2013, a federal judge in Montana retired after acknowledging that he had used court email to circulate a racist joke about Obama.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, editing by Larry King)
