By Juan MontoyaLike an unhousebroken pup who got caught soiling the carpet in the family living room, Brownsville Independent School District Bond Oversight Committee member Ruben Gallegos Jr. has fired off an indignant e-mail to the district board and BOC fellow member complaining of "political grandstanding by" unnamed members.
In an e-mail dated Oct. 6 (Tuesday), Gallegos complains that “Television time paid for by the citizens of Brownsville should not be used to grandstand for any reason…”
Although he does not state it, the object of his wrath seems to have been fellow board member Ernesto De Leon, who has used the BOC meetings to question the progress of construction of the Veteran’s Memorial High School and the new Keller elementary and Manzano middle schools.
Gallegos came on board when Rick Zayas was elected last November. De Leon was reappointed to the BOC by member Catalina Presas Garcia. The BOC is overseeing the use of $158 million in bonds approved by district taxpayers for new school construction.
THE NEW HIGH SCHOOL – MILLIONS IN OVERRUNS, AND A $1 MILLION RESCUE BY DE LEON
Regular viewers of the meetings frequently see De Leon questioning the district’s construction supervisors on the projects. When one of the projects, the new Veterans Memorial High School was denied a permit by the Brownsville Fire Department because the water pressure did not meet fire-fighting standards with the water provided by River Bend Resort and Rancho Viejo, they went to the Valley Municipal Utility District (MUD) and sought a bid.
The VMUD bid $1,396, 900 for the line extension and connection.
De Leon, a former city commissioner, thought the bid was way too high and asked why the Brownsville Public Utilities Board hadn’t been asked to bid. He was told the PUB bid would have been even higher. De Leon contacted PUB manger John Bruciak, and Bruciak said he’d ask his staff to look into it.
PUB’s bid came in at $467,532 – a saving of $929,337, or almost $1 million to district taxpayers from what district administrators recommended to the BOC members.
Chagrined, BISD Building Supervisor Oscar Tapia and district staff withdrew the RVMUD contract from consideration and recommended the PUB offer. Extension of that pipeline should be complete sometime in late November or early December.
“The contract was ready for the district to sign,” De Leon said. “I went before the PUB board and thanked them for working with BISD to address the problem. If that’s what Mr. Gallegos calls political grandstanding, so be it.”
Aside from the water issue, Terry Ray, a BOC member at the time, lobbied against the administration’s recommendation on contractors and talked the other members into choosing the runner-up. In the process, the change raised the construction price from $50 million to $65 million.
The biggest item on the construction’s expenditure? Pay to the new contractor went up from an initial $45,224,498 to $52,892,806. Ray and other members quit the BOC immediately after the change.
Interestingly, when construction began, one of Ray’s construction company foremen was seen working at the school.
KELLER ELEMENTARY AND MANZANO MIDDLE SCHOOL – PROBLEMS FROM THE GET-GO
Even before construction began on these two schools on Alton Gloor, the project was plagued by controversy. On Dec. 30, 2008, Mayor Pat Ahumada, a certified appraiser, went before the BISD board and complained that the price tag for the property was exorbitant, and a gift for developer N.O. Simmons. Simmons had acquired the property about one month before BISD had made an offer to the previous owner.The Brownsville Independent School District purchased 43.5 acres from Simmons for $1.97 million or $45,000 per acre.
Those prices are based on future development thats not even there, Ahumada said, estimating that the land is not worth more than $12,000 (an acre).
BISD Property Search Team members Lorenzo Sanchez, Oscar Tapia and Johnny Pineda wholeheartedly endorsed the district paying Simmons’ exorbitant price.
So instead of paying a reasonable price, the district ended up paying Simmons top-dollar for undeveloped land.
That was just the beginning. Initial architectural drawings shown to BOC members indicated just one entrance onto Alton Gloor. The Texas Department of Transportation told the district that the lone entrance was not feasible to service traffic from both schools.
The district then put aside $165,000 to purchase a private home, demolish it, and plan an entrance/exit on Frankfurt Street, in adjacent Casa Linda Homes subdivision east of the district property. As early as February 2007, De Leon had drafted a letter to BISD administration and told Tapia that a home alongside a property already owned by BISD on Paris Street was for sale and would provide the ingress/egress needed for the school.
He was ignored and the district went about constructing the school and athletic fields and other sport facilities there before addressing the TxDOT concerns. Much later, Tapia came before the board and said that the Alton Gloor access would not be enough to handle the bus and parent traffic at the new schools. Destroying the athletic fields already built there would cost about $323,987.
So, in a change order, he recommended that the home on the eastern side of the project in Frankfurt Street be purchased – at $159,000 for the home alone – to allow traffic out of the schools, and then route it through the subdivision onto Paris Street and other alternate routes inside the subdivision leading to Alton Gloor.
Where did the district come up with the $159,000?
“They made some changes in building materials in some sheds from aluminum to galvanized steel and got rid of bleachers in some of the sports fields,” said De Leon.
The residents of the Casa Linda subdivision have no idea that their once-quiet neighborhood will now be the main route for scores of school buses bringing in children in the morning and then transporting them home in the evenings. Subdivision streets that can barely handle two-way traffic and curbside parking will now be asked to bear a huge increase in traffic.
“The neighborhood is going to be one big bottleneck,” said De Leon. “They have no idea what’s coming. How could I be grandstanding when I warned the administration about this in 2007, before we even knew John Woods would be vacating his office?”
De Leon is one of seven announced candidates for Wood’s position.
“I do not see how taking so much time to discuss intricacies of land purchases which occurred years ago is relevant to current bond issues,” Gallegos wrote BISD administrators, board members and his fellows at the BOC.
Perhaps, as the Bard said many years ago, “Thou dost protest too much, Gallegos.”
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