BEACHWOOD, Ohio –- Beachwood High School students poked fun at Mayor Merle Gorden's much-scrutinized habit of dining out on the taxpayer dollar during the school's variety show last week.

In a video skit reminiscent of Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update," a student-anchor said he called the mayor for comment, but his “secretary said he was out to lunch." A photo of steaks appeared over his shoulder.

The joke was a reference to the more than $18,000 Gorden has spent on lunch for himself and companions since December 2010. Hundreds of people also watched the video on YouTube before it was pulled off the site Monday night.

Beachwood students also criticized the mayor in an editorial in The Beachcomber student newspaper in August for his unlimited expense account and practice of cashing out unused vacation days. Last year, the mayor received $10,000 for three weeks of unused vacation.

“We feel that your spending is, in fact, blatant mismanagement and abuse of taxpayer dollars,” the students wrote. “The taxpayers foot the bill for your copious unused vacation days and lavish meals at some of our city’s finest dining establishments.”

Prior to last year, Gorden regularly cashed in five weeks of vacation, totaling more than $17,000 during several years when the mayor said he never missed a day of work.

“Your expense reports show frequent lunches with other city officials and local politicians,” the students wrote in the editorial. “We believe these meals should never be conducted on the taxpayers’ dime. That’s a lot to ask of them, considering that just three years ago, your administration pleaded for a 33 percent tax increase – and just narrowly got it.”

The students concluded their scathing editorial, telling the mayor -- who with a $208,000 salary is the highest-paid public official in the state -- to "come back from lunch."

The five seniors who created the variety show video would not say why they took it offline or what message they were trying to get across when they created it. The school district did not help the students create the video, nor do it make them take it down, spokesman Doug Levin said.

“I think the pressure came from the parents,” Levin said about the video being removed from the site. “It was just something fun the kids wanted to do, but they didn’t intend for it to be political or become a big deal.”

Click here to read the editorial.

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