OUR REBUKE TO BREEDLOVE: HER SILENCE THAT SAYS NOTHING

By Juan Montoya
When Juliet Garcia planned to use $640,000 from the $68 million bond issue passed in 2004 by Texas Southmost College District taxpayers to pay for a fancy mural by a Mexican artist, Rosemary Breelove was conspicuous by her silence.
Only after the project was halted due to the "dramatic response" from the community over the school’s use of local tax dollars did she finally acquiesce and joined Garcia in stopping the project.
But where was she when Garcia used $17,775 for a handcrafted light fixture for the Center for Early Childhood Studies?
And how about the $358,000 water fountain at the entrance of the structure Education and Business building?
The woman who now worries about fiscal conservatism didn't say one word about soaring tuition and fees charged to local students that places a higher education beyond most of their reach. In fact, she was supportive of Garcia's plea to the Texas Legislature to increase fees that will see an additional $140 increase over the next two semesters.
Perhaps it's just as well.
When she is there, she basically rubber stamps the administration's wish list of extravagant ornaments to gloss over the fact that the community college no longer belongs to the community, but rather to a pampered bureaucracy that sees nothing wrong in buying expensive ornaments while expenditures for the students lag way behind in its priorities.
In fact, a cursory check of her attendance record since May 2004 to December 2009 indicates that of a total of 79 meetings, she was absent in 21 of them.
In other words, her absence rate is about 27 percent.This woman who says she is working for the students managed to attend the meetings where the welfare of the students is decided only 73 percent of the time. Further, if we scrutnize her attendance over the last two years, that rate drops to only about 50 percent.
Is it any wonder then that she might have missed the fact that the UTB-TSC graduation rate over a six-year period is only about 16 percent?
Or that the "partnership" agreement with the University of Texas System completely leaves the local university out of the pot of the oil and gas royalties paid to the Permanent University Fund by mineral exploration and that all construction of Garcia's monuments are funded by local taxpayers and other leveraged sources?
Or that the oil and gas-rich UT System is being subsidized by local taxpayers and is $10 million late in its rent payments to our district residents?
Breedlove is in a runoff with Kiko Rendon for a position on the TSC board.
After 12 years and standing on this kind of record, perhaps we might do ourselves a favor and vote her out. With Rendon on the board, we might actually get someone who cares about providing affordable education to our students and will hold this administration accountable to the people who own the junior college: the community.