UTB AND TSC: TRUSTEES DELIVER THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

By Juan Montoya

They faced the umbrage of an entrenched educational bureaucracy, a cadre of Juliet Garcia cult fanatics, the entire power structure of the city and the high-dollar UT System legal team and stuck to their guns.

A renegade priest promised one of them that he would spend the last breath of his life to "destroy" him professionally and personally in his hometown. And at least two members of the minority on the Texas Southmost College board disparaged them at every turn and tried to stymie their efforts locally and in Austin with their legislative connections.

The local daily– its publisher sympathetic to Garcia and her high-dollar lifestyle– took every opportunity to build up her image, even when she pushed for grandoise public-financed accouterments to her self-styled "community university."

Through it all, four trustees of the TSC board – Kiko Rendon, Trey Mendez, Adela Garza and Rene Torres – held on to their high purpose and now seem to have come out triumphant in their quest: to have both a community college and a free-standing four-year university for local students.
It almost didn't happen.

Last October, supposedly under a time constraint, TSC-UTB President Juliet Garcia and TSC counsel Dan Rentfro presented the new board a new and improved"partnership"plan that they insisted must be approved by them forthwith or else dire consequences would ensue.

The plan was for the new plan to be approved within the space of two meetings spaced a week apart. However, until that day, no one, including the board members, had seen the plan.

And when they saw it, they put the brakes on the railroad job they were expected to approve.

The plan called for nothing less than the dissolution of the TSC district, the handing over of all the district's assets including real estate, buildings, and bank deposits as a "gift"to the oil-and-gas rich UT System. In other words,this poor community would make a gift of about $200 million in assets acquired over 75 years of nurturing our college district with the blood, sweat, and tears of generations.

This was the same system that was $15 million behind in its rental payments to TSC taxpayers.

Further, the board was to function only as an advisory body whose recommendations the UTB- President and the UT System Regents could choose to hear or ignore. The district would continue to exist as a taxing entity until the bond debt of perhaps $120 million including interest was repaid. Then the board and the district could go away.

With the power structure her and in Austin arrayed against them, the four trustees fought back. They refused to back down in spite of the threats and invective spewed from the Garcia cadre and her sycophants. They – in response to the UT Regents vote to separate the two institutions – voted to go at it alone.

Trustees Robert Robles, David Oliveira and Robert Lozano backbit them at every turn and tried to sabotage their every move,with Robles going as far as lining up local communities to oppose them and even calling for a public referendum on their actions.
When they refused to crack under the onslaught, Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. and Rep.Rene Oliveira saw they were serious and had little choice but to draft legislature to implement their decisions.Now we hear that a senate bill accomplishing just that has passed both the state senate and the house and that a companion bill by Oliveira is making its way through the House.

At the end of the arduous and tortuous public policy labyrinth what the majority on the board promised us when they ran for office: a community college for those who need it and a four-year university for those desiring to continue past that level.

It is not often that critics like us can actually cheer for something or someone in public office.

Now, with a success that materially means better and more affordable education for our poverty-stricken community, we extend our gratitude to Adela,Trey, Rene and Kiko for standing up for us.

As Rendon said recently: "Why shouldn't our residents have the same thing everyone else does? Why should our students be the stepchildren of the state?"

Indeed, why should they?

Thank you, guys.