CITY COMMISISON ABDICATES POWER TO RUSTEBERG (UNITED BROWNSVILLE)

"Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves (Matt. 7:15)

By Juan Montoya

Like driving a docile flock of sheep Mayor Tony "The Good Shepherd" Martinez unabashedly told city commissioners and a startled audience that he favored that the appointment to city board be handed over to the wiles of IBC's Fred Rusteberg's United Brownsville.
You remember United Brownsville. That's the shadow government created at the expense of city taxpayers in the waning days of the Eddie Treviño administration at a cost of $1 million. At the time it bore the name of "Imagine Brownsville."
After collecting all available city reports, U.S. Census data, and compiling a "wish list" of city improvements from a gullible public in so-called public hearings steered by his underlings, Imagine Brownsville put together a fat report that has since been gathering dust somewhere in the borrowed office of United Brownsville at the Brownsville Economic Development Corporation.
Burt before "Imagine Brownsville" died a timely death, it turned, like a butterfly, into United Brownsville and its members (Rusteberg, Juliet Garcia, et al) convinced the city, the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation, the Brownsville Independent School District, the Brownsville Navigation District, the Public Utilities Board, the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation and University of Texas at Brownsville/Texas Southmost College to pitch in $25,000 a piece annually to allow Rusteberg's minions to run the city instead of its elected officials.
It was interesting to see that although Martinez said he favored United Brownsville to vet and recommend future members of city boards, he was just fine with extending the appointments of PUB chairman Manny Vasquez and Arturo Farias.
Why would these two fine upstanding PUB board members be spared the vetting and recommendations of United Brownsville? Well, if you remember, Vasquez was the too-willing participant in the coup d'etat that past mayor Eddie Treviño staged when the PUB board removed Eddie Rodriguez (Peewee) as the utility's counsel.
Then PUB chairman Robert Sanchez, Mayor Pat Ahumada, Dr. Joe Zavaletta and Cris Valadez had finalized a four-year contract with new legal counsel Jon Schmid and a five-year contract with financial advisors First Southwest Company. This did not sit well with former
mayor or his business community cronies.
He had then-city commissioner Carlos Cisneros and current commissioner Ricardo Longoria turn the tables on the PUB majority and at once appointed Vasquez to undo the damage, with PUB staff swearing him in in an upstairs room and then Rodriguez issued a statement saying their actions to remove him had been illegal since the board members no longer could perform official business.
Vasquez, by the way, has made a career out of rubbing shoulders with the high and mighty as an adult education teacher with the BISD, and Farias was once a banker whose fortunes have sunk in recent years. In other words, they're just fine and malleable, as Rustberg likes them.
His assessment of Vasquez and Farias being "doing a fine job" is that they attended all the meetings, kind of like the "Perfect Attendance" award my kids get at Hudson Elementary. Is this any way to run a public utility?
Former Mayor Pat Ahumada, by all rights should have been on the United Brownsville board as the executive officer of the city. However, the outspoken mayor openly criticized Rusteberg's shadow government because it was unaccountable to the public and held its meetings in secret, totally void of any transparency.
For that, and other sins of disloyalty to IBC and its overlord Rusteberg, Ahumada was shunned and kicked off the United Brownsville board with a majority vote of his runaway commission.
According to the game plan, each of the contributing entities have two representatives to the United Brownsville board. Three co-chairs, seven at-large nominees and a variety of committees completed the taxpayer subsidized bureaucracy.
Then, as outlined by Dr. G.F. MacHale in one of his most relevant postings to date, Rusteberg, tablets in hand, alighted from the heights of the IBC main building and said thus:
"United Brownsville will focus on a set of strategies and actions that will make sure the Brownsville Borderplex and the Brownsville area we imagined together is built to last, built to last for our children, our children's children. When we agreed to lead Imagine Brownsville, it was never meant to be a plan that would sit on the shelf when it was completed. Plans demand action and that's what United Brownsville is about. We are excited to begin the implementation phase of the plan. This is truly a historic occasion."
The good banker that he is, Rusteberg's financial institution has not contributed one thin dime to this project. Rather, the public is being led by the nose on its own nickel.
One of the people on the payroll is "board facilitator and communications director" Brian Godinez. Another is Mike Gonzalez, the former mayor of Kyle and a conservative Republican, who was handpicked by Rusteberg as the United Brownsville's director at $78,000 a year.
The lobbying firm of Patton Boggs LLP is being paid $75,000 for three months of work.
Now remember, this is your money. Did you have anything to say about this? Can you remove Rusteberg from the board, or for that matter Godinez or Gonzalez? Can you fire Patton Boggs LLP? If you have a gripe with any of them, who do you talk to?
And so as the bible says, we did not become aware that Martinez has given the reins and future of the city to the moneylenders at the temple after he came into office a "wolf in sheep's clothing."