More than two years ago Hurricane Dolly struck the Texas Gulf Coast and since then Cameron County has been filling out endless documentation for a handful of state and federal agencies to get the disaster funds where they are needed.
Over that time, the county received about $14 million from a variety of sources, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Texas Department of Community Development.
When the county commissioners court asked communties to submit their disaster fund requests they were flooded with more than 100 with a total price tag of more than $50 million. Commissioners immediately perceived that there would have to be a ranking scheme to find some equitable way of distributing the funds.
"Out of those 100-plus requests we narrowed it down to 22 projects that were approved," said a county staffer. "Those still have to have an engineering and environmental clearance plan prepared for each one. Until that happens, we can't start working on them."
Accordingly, four projects – in the north and southern end of the county – are already underway, including one in La Feria.
All the commissioners had agreed that the ranking scheme was the fairest way to distribute the funds and directed the staff at the Department of Program Development and Management to judge the projects submitted by the different cities and communities.
Of that $14 million, between $2 and $3 million was given to the county's departments a
s part of that disaster aid.However, when the ranking was performed the mayors of some communities – notably Combes' Silvestre Garcia and Ruben Ochoa of Santa Rosa – raised a hue and cry because their projects did not achieve a ranking that placed them outside the 22 projects chosen.
The Combes Mayor – a former administrative assistant under former judge Gilberto Hinojosa – staged a protest in front of news cameras threatening to go to Austin to overturn the county's choices. In fact, Hinojosa is now the city attorney for that town.
When the projects were presented to the county commissioners, Precinct 2 commissioner (and Democratic nominee for county judge in November), had the stack of requests that did not make the cut before him and took the opportunity to grandstand and chide the staff of the department for not helping the communities with their wish lists.
"How come you aren't helping them to get grants for these?" he said dramatically, well aware that Ochoa and Garcia were in the audience.
When a staff member protested that more personnel would be needed to address the 80 proposed projects by the communities, Wood reluctantly relented.
"I know that the people in that department worked after hours and on the weekends to put together those projects," said a county worker. "They would come in on Saturdays and Sundays to finish them on time."
Even though the storm struck Cameron County in June 2008, the projects weren't prepared until May or June of 2009. The state and federal agencies didn't approve them until December 2009.
Still, as the projects were chosen, there was political hay to be made and Wood knew it. Counting on the Precinct 4 commissioner to go along with him (Pct. 1 commissioner Sofie Benavides is a sure Wood follower), he schemed to bring about a vote to use the funds earmarked for the county departments to funnel them to the squeaky wheels at Santa Rosa and Combes.
That resulted in the county money being sent to smooth the feathers – and Wood to look like a hero in Combes and Santa Rosa – of the grousing mayors.
"Wood played the part of the knight in shining armor at the expense of the county's departments and came out looking like a big shot to the mayors," said a participant in the meeting. "He was playing politics at the expense of the county's staff and the departments affected."
With still more Dolly disaster aid in the offing (remember that the storm happened two years ago), it'll be interesting to see whether Wood will again try to use the aid as a political prop to look good in the eyes of the county's voters before the November election.
4 comments:
Are Santa Rosa and Combes in PCT 2? That is Wood's pct, right? What was he doing in someone else's pct when he ignored his own? If any of you have traveled Central Ave from HWY 48
to Old Port Isabel Rd by the cemetary, Salidad de Luna, Salida del Sol, Michelle, Morrison Rd, Martindale, etc, you will drive over the unattended to, pothole avenues that are indeed a nuisance to the commuters and most of all to the school buses who must be manuevered through the obstacle course everyday. Let's hope that one of these days we won't have to rush over to a bus accident to see if any of our children are involved in a tragic accident. Parents who drive their children to the neighborhood schools must also endure this. In Nov. he will be gone and we expect Ernie Hernandez to come in with his boots on and get those roads fixed.
Wood has ignored Pct 2 since he got re elected in 2006. He publicly said he was not going to run for re election and that he was going to be the worst commissioner Cascos would have to deal with. Well, he was right. He was not only the worst commissioner Cascos has had to deal with but the worst commissioner Precinct 2 has had to deal with. Wood is in this for Wood. He has wants a paycheck, needs a paycheck and relies on the county paycheck to live on.
This article is a distortion. All of the projects submitted by the Town of Combes ranked highly, but because of the way the county applied its criteria so that only one project would be funded per community, the town was penalized because it submitted multiple projects broken down by geographic area, instead of one large, city-wide project. The one project per community rule was not announced before the deadline for submission of projects.
Part of the reason Combes's projects ranked so highly was that the town had adequately documented its damages, and had the highest per capita level of damages in Cameron County. Based on the county's criteria, had Combes submitted one large project, other lower-scoring projects would have been displaced, including some proposed by the county.
The other cities, which included Santa Rosa, Primera and Rio Hondo, were penalized because they did not have documentation of their damages. Those communities stated that they were not aware they needed to document their damages, and that they had been told the county was going to document the damages for them. Each of these cities was heavily damaged by Hurricane Dolly.
At no point was the county staff ever the subject of criticism. All criticism was directed at the criteria adopted by the county, and the manner in which projects were ranked.
In the end, the court did the right thing, and directed the funds towards assisting residents in the hardest-hit part of the county, which was the purpose of the disaster funding.
Blah Blah Blah...the preceding commentary regarding the distortion of the article was in no doubt written by the team of Remi Garza or Jarrod Hockema, former Hinojosa operatives and now hired "consultants" for the City of Combes. These guys continue to live off the government chiche because they are incapable of working in private enterprise. It was incumbent on them to get this grant money, not for the benefit of the community, but as a benefit to them as "paid consultants". What a croc. Totally worthless.
VDLF
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