THE PETE SEPULVEDA LEGACY: DROPPING THE BALL ON ROADS

By Juan Montoya

He was Mr. Everything.

From managing the county's three international bridges to its airport, the county's roads, and even its planning and management department Cameron County Administrator Pete Sepulveda was everything to everybody. Additionally, Pete was also working to built a new international briodge, the second causeway to South Padre Island and even offered to help the Port of Brownsville build the bridge it has been wanting for the last 40 years.

He even had time left over to moonlight as the director of the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority, for a slight fee, of course.

Now that the CCRMA has claimed him as their own, Sepulveda can no longer tap into at least five different county funds to pad his hefty $280,000 salary. Below is a list of the sources of his salary while he was at the county:

County Airport Manager: $5,602; Planning and Inspection: $53,980; Veterans Bridge: $48,516; Los Indios Bridge: $19,391; Gateway Bridge: $14,151;

Total (county) $141,580

Reg. Mob. Auth.: $75,00

Total (Salary): $216,580

(Est.)30 percent benefits: $73,190

(Grand total): $288,770

His assistant David Garcia was no different. Drawing from the same sources, Garcia was paid just slightly less, at: Total (Salary) $180,654

30 percent benefits (est.): $60,210

(Grand Total): $240,864

Now, it doesn't take a genius to figure that a mere mortal could not possibly manage all these tasks and not be overstretched. Something, somewhere, had to snap.

Take roads, for example. When Public Works under the questionable leadership of Sepulveda's supervisor Louis Ara undertook what by now should have been a mundane task of paving Paloma Blanca Road in Precinct 1, they worked on the plan for months, and then sent in the Public Works crew to prepare the base and drainage.

The crews labored for two months getting the prep work done and had set the drainage culverts in place before the actual overlay was begun when they ran into a snag. Apparently, someone had forgotten to do the property title work and overlooked the fact that the road easement in front of the property of Southern Texas Title Co. owner Guy Huddleston wasn't dedicated to the county.

When Huddleston protested and demanded that the road crews remove the culverts and drain boxes from his property, a brouhaha ensued and the crews had to go back and remove the offending structures. Someone, apparently, had not done their homework at Public Works, Engineering, Right-of-Way, Supervision, Administration, etc.

"It sees like someone dropped the ball," Sepulveda sheepishly told the commissioner for the precinct. "The easement doesn't belong to the county. We'll have to remove everything from Mr. Huddleston's property."

Then, take the recent work done at Cameron Park by the same Public Works crews under the direction of the inept Ara, supervised by Garcia, Sepulveda's high-priced assistant. In that project, the workers were placed under an Ara favorite, foreman Ruben Gonzalez, who showed immediately upon arrival at the project that he didn't know his keister from a bar ditch. He had workers climb into deep trenches without the OSHA-mandated protection for workers in sloping ditches.

OSHA mandates that entities doing the work may use a trench box or shield that is either designed or approved by a registered professional engineer or is based on tabulated data prepared or approved by a registered professional engineer.

Timber, aluminum, or other suitable materials may also be used. OSHA standards permit the use of a trench shield (also known as a welder's hut) as long as the protection it provides is equal to or greater than the protection that would be provided by the appropriate shoring system.

Well, our Mr. Gonzalez knew nothing of this and had the workers climb into the trenches without the required protection. But he was Louis Ara's bud, though.

One, Javier Mendoza (Nuco), had the misfortune of suffering the predicable: the trench collapsed and trapped him under tons of dirt. He suffered serious injuries including damage to his internal organs and has now been declared disabled and can no longer work.

As an afterthought, Ara suspended his appointee as foreman Gonzalez and now the county has been forced to pay for all the injured worker's medical and disability payments.

As the commissioners contemplate replacing Sepulveda, and hopefully his able assistant Garcia, they would do well to take a second look at the pyramid of ineptness that now rules Public Works before someone else gets hurt or perhaps killed as a result of the rampart favoritism that allows compadres of the big shots to have them reign over competent workmen.