ZAMORA AND MARTINEZ MAKING LIKE INSPECTOR GADGETS IN CITY BIDDING PROBE

By Juan Montoya
For the past few days, local contractors have received calls from commissioner Melissa Zamora inquiring on whether they feel they have been bypassed in the bidding process for demolition of homes and other structures inside the city.
Under a city manager-mayor form of city government, the city charter usually reserves these tasks for the city manager and his staff or the staff of other departments.
But now, as some members of the city commission have decided to take matters into their own hands, it appears that they have entrusted to themselves the job by bypassing City Manager Charlie Cabler and decided to do it themselves.
The point man in the endeavor, aside from Melissa, seems to be one Ramiro Gonzalez, city of Brownsville comprehensive planning manager, who we have learned is appearing at local city offices with Mayor Tony Martinez in tow asking questions that indicate that they suspect that purchasing agent Robert Luna may be steering demolition contracts to favored contractors.
This isn't sitting well with some contractors, especially since they say they have done demolition contract business with the city for more than a decade and know that some other contractors are better prepared and equipped than others.
"I won;t bid on a contract that I will later have to subcontract, such as sidewalk demolition," said one. "I know that there are others, and we all know each other, who specialize in that sort of thing, so why even bid?"
Gonzalez, however, appears to have caught the mayor's ear and one day appeared at Asst. City Manager's office Jeff Johnston and purchasing agent Luna asking whether any contractors had family members working with the city. Johnson, who is married to a Landreth, of local locksmith fame, said that it wasn't that unusual for people with relatives working for the city to contract for bid items.
"Jeff said that the Landreth often performed jobs for the city and that the fact he worked for the city posed no conflict of interest since there was a bidding process involved, and the decision was not the department head's to make," said a source. "Our city isn't that big. Take the school district, for example. With a budget of close to $500 million and more than 7,000 employees, it would be difficult to find someone who was not related in some sort of way to a BISD employee. Does that mean that person can't bid for a job there simply because his relative is a teacher or maintenance employee there? That's absurd."
We have learned that Gonzalez and Martinez (as well as Zamora) have been sniffing around the vicinity of Public Works director Santana Torres and inquiring whether any of his relatives had gained an unfair advantage from the demolition contracts bid out buy the city.
As longtime Brownsville residents, we can only advice the would-be gumshoes that the Torres family is a large one and has members who are employed in the BISD, the city, and are also self employed.
For years, their dad farmed out in the area off Bowie Road and actually died when a tractor overturned on him as he farmed his corn out in their family farm. Their personal acquaintance with this city and its residents predates most of the sitting city commissioners.
In fact, one of the brothers, an electrician, did work on the mayor's own house.
Zamora, Martinez, Gonzalez and the rest of the investigative corps might well consider the ramifications of their sleuthing before casting aspersions in their direction.