SOFIA BENAVIDES AND COUNTY MINOR DEMONS' ROAD TO HELL

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions..."

By Juan Montoya
Less than a month after Cameron County Public Works dumped an estimated $70,000 to $80,000 in materials and labor, the paving job crews performed on Maverick Road is coming apart.

Maverick Road is a direct link between Southmost and Dakota roads that leads to Lopez High School. Heavy bus and car traffic crowd that thoroughfare and Precinct 1 commissioner Sofia Benavides was under heavy pressure from residents to fix the pothole-pocked road.

But now, after crews under the supervision of Public Works Superintendent Luis Ara III and Precinct 1 foreman Santana Vallejo oversaw the coating of the roadway with a thin layer of asphalt spread over an obviously badly compacted caliche, the roadway is in need of massive repairs.

"You can see the ruts in the roadway already and it's not even a month old," said a motorist who stopped to speak with us as we took the photographs in this post. "You can see the caliche under the asphalt already and it hasn't even rained. If we get a good rain it's going to be torn to pieces. This is a terrible job."

Residents also complain that the asphalt coat is already spilling into the drain ditches along Maverick and that with the ditches dug deeper than normal, kids walking to school have to dodge the traffic along the narrow roadway.

"I've actually seen the buses stop and swerve around the students walking along Maverick," said a woman who lives along the road. "The ditches are so deep and right next to the asphalt that they have no place to go if a car is coming."

A business owner near the Southmost Road/Maverick intersection said the narrow roadway has already caused a car to fall into one of the steep ditches.

"It'll just be a matter of time before others fall into these dangerous ditches," she said. "These people have been in office for maybe a dozen years and they still can't get a simple road construction right.

A former road construction worker said many things were done wrong on Maverick. The spots where the asphalt is obviously sinking indicated that there was no proper compacting done on the caliche base, he said. And the fact that the asphalt is spilling over into the ditches means that the asphalt was not laid correctly or that the quality of the material was not up to par.

"This is a manual on how not to pave a road," he said. "Unless they can pull off a miracle, I wouldn't doubt that they will have to redo the entire road."

The rutting and peeling of the asphalt is visible between the traffic humps placed along the roadway. Long yellow arrows show the problem spots and indicate where repairs must be made. But even if the spots are patched, the problems along the entire roadway will become more obvious as the traffic increases over time.

When the county passed the Project Road Map in the early 1993, it included the widening of Southmost Road. At the time, commissioner Lucino Rosenbaum Jr. concluded that the increased traffic would require the widening of Maverick Road as well. Accordingly, he got the rest of the commissioners to approve a right-of-way purchasing program to widen and pave Maverick Road and move utilities and property fences back to allow for the construction.

However, Rosenbaum was defeated for the commissioner Pct. 1 position by Pete Benavides, who served until his death in 2006. His wife, current commissioner Sofia Benavides was appointed to the position to serve his unfinished term and was re-elected in 2008. Her term expires next year.

"We had started to purchase the right-of-way to widen the road and address the needs of the residents, the school traffic and the pedestrians," he recalled. "We set that money aside for that specific purpose, but when the new commissioner came along the money was moved to hire his political supporters and give them jobs on the precinct road crew. We're looking at the results now."

Ara, from Public Works, was unavailable on Thursday and Vallejo was not in his Precinct 1 office. As Public Works Supervisor, Ara is ultimately responsible to County Administrator Pete Sepulveda. Santana, Pct. 1 Foreman, oversaw the laying of the asphalt.

Santana was a construction supervisor with the City of Brownsville and left under a cloud of suspicion before he went to the county. He recently was the subject of an investigation into the illegal selling of driveway pipes left over from a county project to an elderly resident in Olmito.

However, according to the Cameron County Sheriff's Department, the district attorney's office declined to prosecute because of a "technicality."

"County workers reported the incident to the sheriff and after the county didn't prosecute he's back on the job and supervising the same workers who alerted the sheriff to the (alleged) illegal acts," said a former county worker.

Just north of the Maverick/South Dakota intersection in front of Lopez High School roadway problems are also evident. A former Pct. 1 worker said that half the roadway belongs to the county and the other (on the school side) to the city.

"The county side (west) is not stable," he said. "But Ara has refused to allow the county crews to work on it or stabilize it. If you look closely, half the road is firm and the other (county side) is breaking up. People are complaining.

According to the county's Public Works Division: "It is the Mission of the Public Works Division to improve the quality life for all citizens of Cameron County through the provision of superior project planning , road construction & maintenance, and other professional services. We will attain our mission in an ethical manner providing satisfaction to our clients , the Commissioner's Court, and the citizens of Cameron County while respecting our obligations to our community and fulfilling the personal and professional aspirations of our staff."

Is Maverick Road a glaring example of how not to perform one's mission?