UNITED BROWNSVILLE, UTB CIRCLE THE WAGONS

By Juan Montoya

In the face of unexpected resistance to the new partnership proposal that turn over all the assets of Texas Southmost College to UTB-TSC and the managerial control of that entity to the UT System, proponents of the giveaway are forming a strategy to ram though the agreement on district taxpayers.
Fred Rusteberg, the undisputed architect and planner behind United Brownsville, has met with UTB-TSC president Juliet Garcia, trustee David Oliveira, Robert Robles, and other supporters form a plan to counter the criticism against the proposal.
The group is reportedly seeking to pressure a majority of the board to give carte blanche to the proposal that would take all the TSC assets, including real estate and all its bank deposits, maintain the district as a taxing entity cash cow, and leave the local board in an "advisory" role with the final says-so with the UT Regents.
The Garcia administration hoped that the agreement would be reviewed and voted through in the space of a week on Sept. 21. However, some trustees questioned the urgency of the maneuver since so much of the future of the college district was at stake.
You will recall that Rentfro and his fellows (Provost Alan Artibise, Special Assistant to the Provost for Partnership Affairs Wayne Moore, Vice President for Financial Affairs Rosemary Martinez, and former trustee and executive director Michael Putegnat.
were in extraordinary haste to get the Board to sign the Operating Agreement at the September 23 Board Meeting.
Their tactics included exerting extraordinary pressure on Trey Mendez, providing clueless Robles with notes (handwritten by Garcia herself) to read at the meeting) and, in a genuinely disgraceful move, bringing in students and the aged, benighted Father Armand Mathew to beseech Trustees Adela Garza, Kiko Rendon, Rene Torres, and vacillating Mendez to sign the document or risk destroying the partnership.
There was a reason for all the pressure and all the apparently inexplicable haste: the UT System Regents were scheduled to discuss the new Operating Agreement on September 28, just a few days after the TSC Trustees were supposed to have signed the new Operating Agreement.
This was all part of a long-arranged plan with UT System.
In order for an item to be placed on the Regents’ agenda, even a "Special Called Meeting" like this one, it must be submitted well in advance, usually months in advance. Garcia and her folks thus considered the Operating Agreement a done deal months ago, for if there had been any thought whatsoever that the Trustees might balk, any doubt that they could be induced to sign, the item never would have been placed on the Regents’ agenda in the first place.
What this means is that the outcome of all the public hearings here in Brownsville on the new Operating Agreement, the outcome of all the hastily-called special meetings and the closed-door hearings leading up to September’s Board of Trustees meeting, all of it had been considered a done deal by Garcia and her operatives well in advance.
The hearings and the meetings and the discussions were a farce, a charade, intended to suggest public support for a decision that had been made long before.
But things did not go as planned for the President. S
Some of the Trustees saw through the deception and began raising questions. Several even began fighting back.
Suddenly it appeared that the Trustees might not sign the Operating Agreement, and panic quickly set in among Garcia and her operatives. Things were not going as planned, and the result was that the pressure on the Trustees was ratcheted up even higher so that everything would be in order by the time the Regents met on September 28.
But the pressure was not fully successful. The Trustees put off their vote until their October 21 meeting. The President had lost the battle, but the war over the new Operating Agreement was still raging.
What happens now is a further heightening of the pressure on the Trustees.
The Regents’ special meeting will be re-scheduled for shortly after the October 21 TSC Board meeting. If the outcome is in doubt, the pressure on the Trustees will increase even higher.
So stay out of the way: these people are utterly ruthless and will stop at nothing to get their way.
How important is that the trustees hold firm in their position?
The college is one of the legs on the United Brownsville stool. Already, several meetings of United Brownsville have been postponed indefinitely. If the elections in the Brownsville Independent School District don't go their way, that would be another leg on that stool that could derail the plans Rusteberg and Garcia have to virtually run the city without the pesky task of consulting with the voters fr their approval or any other form of accountability.
The future of representative government hangs in the balance.