RRUN-RRUN ENDORSES HINOJOSA, HASSE TO TSC BOARD

By Juan Montoya

After an agonizing three minutes, the two-member board of El Rrun-Rrun blog has voted unanimously to endorse Tad Hasse and Ramon Champion Hinojosa to the Texas Southmost College board of trustees.

The vote comes on the heels of a lively forum held at by the UTB-TSC Center for Civic Engagement where only Hasse and Hinojosa's opponent Robert Uresti attended.

In the Hasse vs. Dr. Reynaldo Garcia race for Place 6, we opted not for Garcia for these reasons: Garcia was a board member of the Brownsville Independent School District and was content to let that entity float along by inertia from disaster to disaster. He might as well not have been even there.

Need we mention that he also sat on the bond oversight committee where $128 million dollars in construction was spent and failed to put a stop to the sweetheart contracts doled out to district compadres and relatives, allowed the reign of AD Joe Rodriguez to roll along unimpeded, and oversaw the gross favoritism and abuse of the system with nary a peep?

Or that a huge amount of funds were doled out to local architects and contractors with a healthy dose of change orders? Cost overruns at Veterans High School alone went from $42 million to more than $60 million.

Did we mention that the district constructed that high school only to find that there was not enough water pressure and was rejected on safety grounds by the Fire Department?

And poor planning by the district resulted in unplanned purchases of nearby homes to afford acceptable ingress-egress points from the Manzano-Keller schools after the district's plans were rejected by the Texas Department of Transportation.

Hasse, on the other hand, can be truculent and difficult at times, but has personally borne the brunt of the unconscionable steep tuition and fees costs at the UTB-TSC hybrid because he still has kids that school. He will have a stake in this fight to lower tuition and fees for students in the district. The eventual winner in this race will have to gird his loins for the long run ahead to set this district on the road to fiscal integrity and growth in the difficult years ahead as it leaves its abusive relationship with the UT System. Tad's our man.

In the Hinojosa-Uresti race for Place 7, we choose Hinojosa not because we dislike Uresti, but some of his recent statements blaming the incarceration of three of his children on the school system smacks of victimization and of shirking our responsibility for the behavior of our children. That and his statements that he would not hesitate to chop off heads of faculty and staff as the UTB-TSC separation lurches forward. At this time, that's not the kind of intemperate statement to make as people try to save their family's livelihoods.

Hinojosa has more than enough educational qualifications under his belt such as being superintendent of two school districts, a principal in a construction-cost consulting firm, a valuable asset we feel is needed on the board to join Kiko Rendon and the TSC majority. Uresti's astute talents of analysis can best be utilized if he is appointed to one of the TSC committees that keeps an eye on the administration to maximize its efficiency and keep its ear close to the pulse of the community. We go with Ramon on this one.

The regular election for the two positions on the board will be held on May 12. Early voting will started on April 30 and will continue through May 8.