DESPITE GARCIA'S FULL COURT PRESS, TRUSTEES REMAIN FIRM

By Juan Montoya
By all accounts, the pressure upon the members of the board Texas Southmost College from adherents to TSC-UTB President Juliet Garcia's plan to dissolve the community college district and have her assume unquestioned control over the real estate and assets of the 75-year old institution has been brutal and unrelenting.
The state offices of Texas Rep. Rene Oliveira and Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. have been turned into outposts of cajoling and intimidation against the four members of the TSC board who aren't convinced that the community's investment in higher education should be given away so facilely.
It stands to reason that these two gents would carry water for Garcia. After all, they were at the scene of the crime in Austin when Garcia and the board then sold the community on a second-class institution subsidized by the district but draped with the prestige of being part of the glorious UT System.
What started out as a subtle plan to have her plan approved in two meetings last October before anyone could find out what it contained was foiled for Garcia when details of the new and improved partnership agreement leaked out to the community.
When district residents found out that what was in Garcia's blueprint fell nothing short of handing the district's properties, buildings, bank assets, and anything of value (except for about $102 million in outstanding debt) to the UT System, they balked.
At least four of the seven trustees (Trey Mendez, Adela Garza, Rene Torres and Kiko Rendon) questioned the idea of giving away to the UT System the dreams and aspirations of district residents to provide the vehicle for their children to have a better future through an affordable and accessible education.
The other three (Drs. Roberto Robles, Roberto Lozano and lawyer David Oliveira), for whatever reason, think its perfectly OK to present the district lock-stock-and-barrel on a silver platter to the oil-and-gas wealthy system that has welshed on the rent to the district to the tune of $15 million like a miserly uncle.
TSC counsel Daniel Rentfro - in a letter, dated Sept. 21, 2010, warned trustees that unless the partnership was approved in its form, predicted financial ruin, lower pay for college employees and higher taxes (more than double) for the district.
The "workgroup" with which Rentfro participated included the usual suspects: Provost Alan Artibise, Special Assistant to the Probost for Partnership Affairs Wayne Moore, Vice President for Financial Affairs Rosemary Martinez, and former trustee and executive director Michael Putegnat. He called Moore and Putegnat "two of the architects of the original partnership agreement."
Also aiding the group were trustee David Oliveira and UTB-TSC president Juliet Garcia. In a latter vacillating between praise for the original framers and biting criticism that their work-product had proved inadequate, Rentfro said it was time to adopt his new "single-entity" model and that he predicted it is "a new model of higher education that in years to come would be copied around the nation."
And, predictably, Rentfro warned of ominous consequences if the partnership agreement he drafted was not approved then.
Fortunately for TSC residents, the majority of the trustees didn't see what the rush was all about and replied in kind.
They rejected the new partnership agreement and said they would draft a proposal of their own. The final nail shutting down the proposed agreement came in the form of an open letter penned by TSC Trustee Adela Garza.
"... The only thing that changes is that UTB, suitably renamed, will assume control of everything that once belonged to the TSC district and its board," Garza wrote. "The entity proposed by President Garcia is thus a fiction. Better said, it is a legal fiction designed to permit UTB and its president to legally seize control of everything that once belonged to the TSC district and its elected representatives."
Things have gone from bad to worse.
Once rebuffed, Garcia pulled out what had been her trump card, conveying to the UT Regents and Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa that while she was willing to push for the partnership proposal, the trustees in Brownsville were not being reasonable. Perhaps putting a little scare into those uppity yokels would do the trick.
And so the news came down and were trumpeted throughout Munchkinland that the UT System would dissolve the partnership. If the trustees wanted to rethink their position, why the UT System would charitably reconsider. However, they had to do this before March 15, when the Second Coming was predicted or Armageddon would result.
And so the campaign began in earnest.
A PAC "Save UTB" was started and funded so that today, the day the meeting where unification or separation of TSC-UTB would be decided, three full-page ads (at a cost of around $7,500) were bought in the local daily. To be fair, one of the $2,500 ads was partially paid by TSC-UTB, the Brownsville Herald, and the Harlingen Valley Morning Star. In other words, Freedom Newspapers.
The battleground is set for today at the trustees meeting at 5:30 at the Arts Center.
With a call to war, the PAC's ads call today D-Day and warn that if the trustees table the item on their agenda, district taxes will double. If they vote to knuckle under and unify, you will immediately see a two-third reduction of property taxes.
Now, the ad doesn't say where the PAC is getting its numbers. By contrast, projections made by a UT System-TSC working group last Thursday indicated that if a separation did indeed occur the community college could reduce tuition by 15 percent without raising taxes.
Another scare tactic being used by the Save UTB PAC is that open admissions at UTB would cease. What they're not saying is that the only reason open admissions are available at TSC-UTB is because of the participation in the partnership by TSC, not the other way around. TSC will always have open admissions. UTB, on the other hand, won't.
The public lynching of the majority of the TSC board is the last gasp of a failing campaign to cower the trustees into giving away the farm. You remember the philosophy outlined in the Garcia game plan contained in a TSC-UTB administration analysis.
"There are three ways you can get the someone to do what they do not want to do: You can threaten them, you can trick them, or you can buy them out. Since the first of these is unlikely to yield results, while the second is devious and potentially destructive, the third alternative suggests itself as the appropriate way to proceed."
Now, with the call to arms, Garcia is going back to Square One to try to achieve her aims. We have come, as it were, full circle.
One thing the Save UTB PAC is not addressing is a telling quote from the same game plan. This, in effect, allows that UTB was lured here grudgingly and came because it was given an opportunity to do so by the pliant Messrs. Lucio and Oliveira and local business leaders.
"As everyone knows but nobody dares speak, the partnership was originally established less for its institutional merits than because it was the best, perhaps the only way to lure UT System to Brownsville," the analysis stated.
What resulted was the incongruous situation where a poverty-stricken community is subsidizing the prestigious UT System with local tax dollars, something that it does nowhere else.
"The most honorable course for the UT System to do would be to at last assume full financial responsibility for UTB-TSC. After all, having a component of the system tax the citizens of its surrounding area to the tune of some $15 million annually, is a situation unknown elsewhere in the system...creating a second-class status for the institution even as it imposes major economic burdens on one of the poorest communities in the nation," it states.
It's not as if the TSC-UTB partnership under Garcia has yielded any type of enviable track record. Peruse some of the figures attained by the venerable Garcia and her empire.
*Less than a 50 percent freshmen retention rate
*Less than 17 percent graduation rate for students over six years
*The highest tuition rates and fees of any community college in the State of Texas
*A ranking so low among institutions its size that it is "not rated"
*A morale among faculty and staff at the TSC-UTB that is growing worse as measured by two surveys performed by the UT-Austin Dept. of Social Work
In the final analysis, it comes down to whether we want to follow Garcia down her road or Save TSC which has served generations of our residents well in the past as a successful community college.
It should be a no-brainer and we urge the majority to remain fast in their defense of our community college. Our people are well worth it.