CITY'S FATE TO BE DECIDED TODAY BY YOU, THE VOTER

By Juan Montoya
Today the fate of four candidates for public office will be decided.
Today fortunes will be made and the direction of the city's representation will be set by the citizens who cast their ballots in the voting booths.
The races are for the At-Large A position between Robert Lopez and Estela Chavez-Vasquez. Lopes has run an uphill battle against Chavez-Vasquez, the darling of the status quo. If she wins with the support of Mayor Tony Martinez, he will in effect be issue carte blanche to guide the city in whatever direction he and his banker-university-business backers want him to.
The same people who contributed to Martinez, like Terry Ray, Jim Tipton, et al, have opened up their wallets to Vasquez-Chavez.
Trey Martinez, the mayor's son, gave her $1,000.
With this money flowing from these interested parties, it stands to reason that Vasquez-Chavez will do the bidding of the new mayor and his supporters. One hand, the saying goes, washes the other.
Throughout the campaign, a campaign of rumor and innuendo against Lopez has been waged by proxy by Chavez-Vasquez supporters. First they point to the mail-in votes he received in the first go-round as a sign that he is buying politiquera votes. Then they hinted loudly about supposed wrongdoing in his paperwork for a contract his business had with the city's weatherization program. But that's about as far as they got. No proof, no smoking gun. Just vicious rumor.
Inn the other race between Dr. Tony Zavaleta and John Villarreal for District 4, we are not convinced that Villarreal will have the experience or the gumption to stand up to the likes of Rusteberg, the Tiptons, or Terry Ray of push comes to shove. Whatever you may think of Zavaleta, he has shown he has the fortitude to go hand to hand with anyone on any issue that he thinks important to his west-side neighborhood.
Will he question the funding for United Brownsville, that Rusteberg invention to milk the city and other entities to the tune of $25,000 each without accounting to anyone and holding meetings closed to the public? And, if Martinez is successful at achieving a supermajority on the commission, will the PUB impact fee be revisited and lowered to satisfy developers?
Remember, Villarreal's benefactor Ernie Hernandez led the effort to lower the impact fee to a ridiculously low $300 after $750,000 worth of studies said it should be closer to $4,000 to give PUB ratepayers an even shake. Under this pressure, will Villarreal stand his ground? We doubt it.
District 4 needs someone like Zavaleta and the city needs someone unbeholden to anyone like Lopez.
For good or ill, those are our choices. The rest is up to you, the voter.