DOES MAYOR MARTINEZ RATE A PERSONAL SECRETARY?

By Juan Montoya

Everywhere he goes, HIzzoner Mayor Martinez takes a secretary with him as if to show that he needs someone to take notes for him.

Whether it's to a meeting with county officials or to other entities like the Workforce Commission, the secretary is there with her pen and notebook to take notes for Martinez.

"It's like he's trying to send a message that he needs a secretary for his city position," said a staffer at the Workforce office. "If Pat Ahumada had asked for a secretary, he'd have been ridiculed as being pompous and arrogant."

Recently, some of Martinez's staunchest supporters have been heard openly saying that the city workload justified Martinez having a personal secretary at the city's expense.

"He has two secretaries doing nothing but city work at his office," a prominent businessman and Martinez supporter was recently overheard at a local watering hole.

"But what if every commissioner anted one, too?" chortled his dinner mate.

"No, they don't need one," he answered. "He's the figurehead of the city and they aren't. He shouldn't have to be paying from his own pocket for secretarial services if he's doing city work."

"It looks like he's laying to the groundwork to justify the city giving him a personal secretary," said a city employee. "The city already has a city secretary, so maybe someone from there could do his work when he needs it. But it seems to us that he's trying to make it obvious that he should have one. As far as I can remember, no mayor has ever had one."

The City of Brownsville started the 2010-2011 fiscal year with a $88.320 million budget. Throw in a couple of Certificates of Obligation issues of between $13 million during Ahumada's last days in office and another $5.7 when Martinez came in and the total comes in a at about $105 million.

Were it nor for the cash infusion from the Brownsville Public Utility Board of about $10.18 million gross and net transfers of cash to the city, it would go broke. Of course, the transfers are paid by PUB ratepayers, the same ratepayers that pay property taxes to the city.

In fact, PUB over the last 10 years has kicked in about $100 million to te city's budgets, in effect making it a double tax on Brownsville residents.

The Brownsville Independent School District is by far PUB's biggest electric customer, with an annual consumption of 62,9994,497 Kilowatt hours that puts about $5.6 million in revenues in PUB's coffers.

If you add the $600,783 in water services sold to the BISD plus the $710,138 wastewater, the schools actually pay PUB about $7 million of its budget in services. who are the BISD's main contributors? The same taxpayers and ratepayers that fund the city budget, of course.

As the local entities look about to trim and pare their budgets, city residents might wonder why we still subsidize the Golf Center at a cool $410,000 rate annually. The airport isn't making ends meet either and receives a hefty helping hand from the city as well.

And while we're talking about making ends meet, let's not forget that hte BISD just passed a $450 million budget without going into the reserve fund and keeping taxes the same. It did so by freezing hiring at the same levels and fighting a war of attrition on expenses.

Now, we don't see the chairperson of the BISD asking for a private secretary even if she and the board members manage a budget four times the size of Martinez over at City Hall. In fact, compared to the size of the city workforce of 1,114 employees, BISD's 7,080 easily make it the largest employer in the city.

That's why some observers questioned the comments made by Martinez when he took office about wanting to keep former superintendent Brett Springston despite the fact that it was Springston who resigned after a majority of board members expressed dissatisfaction with his performance.

If the mayor immediately after taking office approved the issuance of $5.7 million in COs to make ends meet, what right, really, does he have to question the decision of a board that deals with a district with a budget four times the size of his, a workforce six to seven times the size of his, and a budget that has to be continually bailed out by PUB ratepayers, (most of them BISD employees)?

And he says he needs a personal secretary paid by those same ratepayer and property owners?

Midete, Tony.