WILL $46 MILLION GRANT INFUSION STAY IN BROWNSVILLE?

By Juan Montoya
With drum rolls and much fanfare, the Brownsville Public Utilties Board announced that it had been the recipient of a $46 million grant for wastewater system improvements by the Texas Water Development Board under Barak Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
PUB General Manager John Bruciak said the money would go toward repairing old sewer lines in the city's aging wastewater system and said the funds would stimulate hundreds of new jobs for local residents.
But will it?
As we have seen in the past, whenever a large construction project by local entities such as BISD, BND, PUB, the city, etc., is announced, many of the contracts go to companies that are not even from Brownsville. J.A. Sandoval, who, lives in the inner city remembers a few years back as he was walking by the old city cemetery and hearing the workers talking.
"I used to be a migrant worker and we travelled up north to work," he recalled. "The workers who were overlaying asphalt on one of the streets were from Arkansas. You could tell by the way they talked and and by the signs on their equipment. They weren't even from here."
The money used for the repairs was from a bond issue, he said.
"That means that maybe my kids will be paying for the work 10 years from now and none of that money stayed here," said Sandoval.
PUB, like the city, has the option of selecting a bid from a local contractor even if their bid is 5 percent higher than another who isn't from here. That option – called local preference – is sometimes used by these entities to assure that the money from their improvements stays in the area.
However, the entities must comply with the bidding process.
"One of the problems local contractors have is that many of them cannot get the performance bonding necessary to get an award," said PUB member Ramon Hinojosa. "We are under the gun to make these repairs as quickly and sometimes the local contractor takes a long time to do the job."
Some established contractors – like Terry Ray – have relatives in the banking industry that allowed them to attain the bonding with ease. However, PUB sometimes has to go outside the area to get the work done.
"We are looking at getting 10 or more contractors working at the same time to get the repairs done quickly," Hinojosa said. "I don't know if we can get that many local contractors from the city."
As an example of what can be done to insure that local people get the jobs, Hinojosa said that the Edinburgh school disitrict had underataken a $90 million school construction project and hired general contractors from outside the city who could handle projects from $10 million and up.
"The contract called for the subcontractors (carpenters, cement layers, architects, engineers, etc.,) to come from the Edinburgh area," he said. "These people have to be told that they must perform the work well or else the district may have to turn somewhere else."
Sandoval remembers that in 2007, just before the city commission election, the city pulled $1 million from its reserves to fix the streets that were in the worst condition. The move was a welcome one to the residents who had to put up with potholes that damaged their vehicles and made for a bumpy ride around the city.
However, when the main contractors were announced, he was surprised to learn that one of them was not from Brownsville.
"I hope that doesn't happen with PUB," he said. "We sure could use the $46 million in jobs. But Brownsville has a habit of handing out money to other communities by hiring people from the outside to do the work our own people could do.
"Come to think of it, the city and the other districts that are from Brownsville should have a residency rule in its employment policies. If you're from Harlingen, McAllen or San Benito and have a job in Brownsville, you don't pay city taxes and enjoy all the benefits. Then you take your money and spend it somewhere else. We should hire people who live here and spend their money here."

Hinojosa, for one, believes that might be something the city and PUB could adopt in its personnel policies in the future. However, he said that the immediate plan is for the money to be pumped into the economy as soon as possible.

"I am one of the biggest proponents of hiring local people," he said. "Believe me, I am going to do everything possible to make sure that happens when we spend this money.