ARE WE BETTER OFF THIS YEAR THAN WE WERE BEFORE THE NEW CITY CREW TOOK OVER?

By Juan Montoya
During his 1980 presidential campaign against Jimmy Carter, Ronald Raygun hit a nerve when he asked Americans 'Are you better off than you were four years ago?"
 Now it's time for Brownsville residents to paraphrase the same question: "Are we better off than we were a year ago before we elected the new bunch at city hall?
The streets look the same, or worse. The economy is not much better. Millions are still being spent lavishly by our economic development alphabet soup boards (BEDC, GBIC, BCIC, etc...). And United Brownsville – accountable to no one – is still siphoning off  $25,000 from the city, each of these boards, plus another four or five entities to implement a plan for which it has no legal authority other than the mandate of Lord of the Manor Fred Rusteberg, president of IBC bank and a resident of Rancho Viejo Resort.

We still have a city manager with zilch urban management training, much less a degree on the subject. We have his ally contract City Attorney Mark Sossi drawing more than $180,000 for part-time work while doling out plums to those he's beholden for previous sins. We have a city commissioner who has decided that the politically thing right to do is to make sure everyone is force dt eat healthy, uses no plastic bans at stores, and who is leading the good battle against those pesky cigarette butts.

But yes, you may say, we got rid of that loudmouth, brash, and pushy commissioner Charlie Atkinson and dog lover Mayor Pat Ahumada. True. Instead, we have acquired the services of Stealth Mayor Tony Martinez who's content to let the sewage continue flowing from the city commission chambers, into the river and out into the Gulf of Mexico.

The public is still muzzled and prevented from having their comments aired on their public airwaves. And the white elephant called the Brownsville Sports Park is still draining away valuable public assets like a whirlpool.

But we do have a wall to keep out the Mexicans. And, by golly, once we get together a plan (and money) to construct a Riverwalk with Mexico, we have the OK from the feds to remove it. Right.

We have a new city commissioner who's being investigated for beating her mate, another who interferes with DWI arrests of her friends and makes no bones about it. We have fire department chief who has no business filling that spot and regularly get shot down when he's trying to push his omnipotent management style down the throats of his underlings.

The local newspaper hawks the message that the plastic bag ban has worked wonders for our environment. Really? Take a gander at the drainage ditch across Old Port Isabel Road from the Wal-Mart and tell me that the same plastic bags a year after the ban are still not draped across mesquite trees and snagged on weeds on the ditch banks? We might as well put a good spin on it and declare the plastic bag snagged across mesquite trees and fences the official Brownsville City Banner.

You can't legislate cleanliness. And you can't legislate political correctness either.

With the majority of the city commission content to allow the Powers That Be under Rusteberg and his power elite to have their way, there will never be any real progress made on behalf of the residents of this city. About the only silver lining to be seen in terms of economic development in town is the influx of upper middle-class Mexicans fleeing the violence in our neighbor to the south and bringing their money with them. And regardless of what anyone in the local chamber of commerce says, it wasn't the millions we spend in economic development that enticed them here. 

But that's not why we built the wall, is it?

Now, are you better off now than you were a year ago?.

"There you go again!"