COACH JOE SYNDROME: BROWNTOWN'S HALL OF INFAMY

By Juan Montoya
Former Brownsville Independent School District Athletic Director Joe Rodriguez's chance to grab at the brass ring came on Dec. 3, 1969.
It was a drizzly night at Sams Stadium when his Brownsville H.S. football team was beaten like they had been caught stealing chickens 47-14 by the Seguin Matadors for the regional title. It was the highest level the team had ever reached.
Rodriguez has ridden that 10-2 season for all it's worth and built a personality cult and cottage industry. You remember the names: Desi Najera, Ruben Fernandez, Charlie Hernandez, Johnny "O" Olvera,  Alberto Treviño, Lonnie Robinson, Danny Salinas, Lonny Robinson, Mike Goode, and Mike Adams, Leal, etc..
And locals remembered them, too. Najera went on to be fire chief, and later emergency coordinator for the county while the others were found suitable positions by a thankful city.
Rodriguez went on to become a trustee at the BISD, then Athletic Director, and then a vendor where he made princely sums as a result of the connections he made with his compadres and the patronage he dispensed through his patronage when AD and trustee.
At least thre audits and a foresnsic audit have shown that Big Joe has served himself well at the public through while cloaking himself in a mantle of sainthood and benevolence. An idol with feet of clay.
We, in Brownsville, have nurtured a vice that allows people like Big Joe and others to milk that fleeting moment of fame for decades to come. Just when you think there's no more juice left in the turnip, another squeeze gets the juice flowing again.
Take another example. 
Former mayor Eddie Treviño ran for the Democratic nomination for county judge and lost to John Wood who would later lose to Republican Carlos Cascos. He was the driving force behind the $1 million gift to Carlos Marin and Ambiotec who translated a foiled attempt to secure a congressional appropriation into what we now know as United Brownsville. More on that later.
Treviño's loss came on the eve of his name popping out in the federal trial of disgraced 404th District Judge Abel Limas who was convicted of taking bribes and fixing cases for money and making favorable rulings. He was one of those named as having passed the envelope Limas' way.
Nonetheless, he had padded his nest well, and had appointed members to the Public Utilities Board, a stroke of foresight. When the majority on the PUB board led by Treviño appointee and board chairman Emmanuel Vasquez (pictured with Eddie) decided to change counsel at the utility, it was a natural that Treviño's firm be handed the  gravy formerly given to PeeWee Rodriguez, coincidentally, Big Joe's brother.
Then we have the case of Jose Hector Chirinos, an affable, friendly old rascal whose schools never made the top 10 academically, but whose "buena gente" personality made him a darling of the office secretarial pool. He always cultivated a following of secretaries and sycophants that were called "Barbies" and "Princesas" while he was a high school principal at Porter and later, as director of Transportation. After gross anomalies were found during an audit of that department, he was too  much of a liability to keep there. He was overly generous on overtime to the bus drivers, who loved him. Afterwards, it was discovered that he had spent $100,000s on inventory that has now become obsolete and useless to the district.
What wasa BISD's response?
He was transferred from Porter to Transportation, to interim principal at Veterans Memorial H.S. and them to Curriculum and Instruction at the Main Office where administrators could keep an eye on him. Offended at the perceived slight (at more than $146,000 a year it was somewhat bearable, though), he left the district only to make another apparition as a candidate for the BISD board and – after a dubious recount – became a board member. The fox is now in charge of the henhouse.
Sylvia Atkinson is another such Brownsville survivor and chameleon of a 1,000 lives.
After traipsing through the South Texas educational landscape collecting $100,000s in resignation settlements from a handful of school districts, she was made a grants administrator when Rick Zayas and Ruben Cortez were trustees so that she wouldn't run against Cortez in the 2010 election. Her commitment to "the children"vanished and she grabbed the brass ring at $85,000. She told some of the trustees she was "ready when you tell me" to take over as BISD superintendent from Carl Montoya.
Well, the trustees weren't quite ready and moved her over to Human Resources where she wrangled a job for her brother Charlie who had been unceremoniously dumped by the voters of the City of Brownsville who opted to take their chances on a write-in candidate by the name of Jessica Tetreau-Kalifa. Another winner.
Atkinson began to busy herself planting landmines for superintendent Carl Montoya and after she moved some 200 teachers, administrators, principals and assorted other victims, the trap was set. People were moved to lower paying positions, or, if he pleased, to higher-paying ones and from higher to lower classifications when it pleased her. The lawyers are now combing the landscape for the human detritus of her wiles to convert her calculated ineptness into BISD cash settlements.
Alarmed at the potential liabilities the district could face, Atkinson was moved to Curriculum, another administrative mistake. She was then hurriedly moved to Area Assist. Superintendent of the Hanna-Veterans Memorial high schools cluster where she is currently overseen by the super.
And what about Judy Cuellar, the quintessential BISD bureaucracy survivor?
You remember her. Back in 2003 she was the administrator for the BISD Payroll Dept. an audit of the department found numerous anomalies and shortcomings and gave her some "unsatisfactory" ratings in several categories including her "inconsistent efforts" to collect over payments, among those one "particular" employee who was overpaid $3,356. The audit included findings of:
1. Falsifying time sheets.
2. Employee no signing in and out during lunch hours
3. Lost time sheets 
4. Inaccurate time sheets.
Cuellar is now listed as the director of Employee Benefits/Risk Management at $98,704.
Guess what? We have learned that Cuellar has now been tapped after her glorious performance back to...no fair, you were peeking...Payroll. Robert Ruiz, the former Payroll director as listed at a salary of $100,902. Does this mean that Cuellar, with her dubious experience in the Payroll Dept., will get a raise out of the deal? Probably.
We could go on an on. The Coach Joe Syndrom is alive and well in Browntown.
Which brings us – as promised – to United Brownsville. Instead of getting our jaundiced view, let sitting city commissioner Ricardo Longoria tell the sad tale of our discontent.
"In 2006, then-congressman Jim Oberstar of Minnesota told us that he had money for our Downtown Revitalization but we needed a plan in print that identified our projected plans and a sort of needs assessment for our community," Longoria recounted for a local blogger.
"That was when we came back and went out for proposals and through a fair process Ambiotec Engineering (Marin's oufit) was awarded a contract to begin this plan so we could return to Washington and congressman Oberstar and secure funding. The plan was created, congressman Oberstar as well as (former) congressman Solomon Ortiz were unsuccessful in being re-elected, so we had to come back and begin anew," he said.
"In my personal opinion: the plan has been created, the projected targets and needs have been identified," Longoria wrote. "Thank you for your service ladies and gentlemen of our community."
Ah, if it were that easy.
Just like Big Coach Joe, Marin, Treviño, Imagine Brownsville, joined by IBC President Fred Rusteberg and UTB's Juliet Garcia, hadn't whetted their appetite of public bucks with just one loss and were hungry for more. They convinced Treviño (another Coach Joe devotee) and the rest of the commission to ram through the idea of a renamed Imagine Brownsville (which morphed into the United Brownsville nonprofit) after that failure (misma gata pero revolcada), and to have eight public-funded entities give it $25,000 to operate it.
Just like they gave Rodriguez a life-long industry, they did as they were told.
In retrospect, perhaps it isn't so much the players in this Brownsville tragedy who's to blame. Rather, it's us, the audience, who have sat through these predictable scenarios and seem content to watch sequel after sequel of the same story and have paid the entrance fee like sheep only too glad to get fleeced.