X-MAS SPIRIT HITS BISD: ANOTHER $25,000 TO UNITED BROWNTOWN SCAM

By Juan Montoya
The Christmas spirit has proven contagious as the Brownsville Independent School District gets set to give the private nonprofit its annual $25,000 "gift compliments of its taxpayers.
In what has become an annual bloodletting by local entities strapped for cash and trying to make ends meet, the members of the board of trustees will be asked to contribute their share of the sugar plums and pudding to IBC's Fred Rusteberg and UTB's Juliet Garcia's shadow government.
In an item titled "B. Recommend approval of the following payment: 15. Discussion, consideration and possible action to pay United Brownsville annual membership fees to the City of Brownsville in the amount not to exceed $25,000 from budgeted Local Maintenance Funds", BISD board president and United Brownsville board member Ernique Escobedo will make the pitch to give the people's money away to the group.
The item will come up at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday during a regular meeting of the board.
You remember this United Brownsville group. It was first born under the moniker Imagine Brownsville (no, not Mayor Tony Martinez's slogan, not yet) and was rammed through the city commission by former Mayor Eddie Treviño. The effort was spawned in the fertile mind of public fund predator Carlos Marin (a senior advisor of the group) and siphoned off more than $1 million in city funds and in-kind services to establish it.
A series of "town hall" meetings ensued where the participants were enthralled and bamboozled to draw up a wish list of things they felt the community needed. At these meetings, slick, colored graphs drawn straight from the U.S. Census were displayed like wallpaper around the meeting places, giving participants the impression that their $1 million was generating real, tangible results.
The work-product of the effort was a voluminous document that suggested what the city should do to implement the wishes contained in the document. But there was just a little hangup. The document carried no authority, and future city commissions and other entities were under no obligation to follow its mandates. That's because no one had given the group the authority into dictate to elected officials or public boards that they should follow the dictums of the group.
Further, the group answers to no one but the self-appointed board. By electing its own members from the ranks of local entities, they guaranteed that these entities in turn, would push the Marin-Rusteberg-Garcia agenda as if it had been the mandate from an elected board. Now even HIzzoner Martinez is carrying water for this bunch.
At one time, the group even claimed it could (and did) hold meetings closed to the public.
Still, the suckers bit.
Lord of the Manor Rusteberg, who alighted from Mount Sinai tablets in hand, announced that:
"United Brownsville will focus on a set of strategies and actions that will make sure the Brownsville Borderplex and the Brownsville area we imagined together is built to last, built to last for our children, our children's children. When we agreed to lead Imagine Brownsville, it was never meant to be a plan that would sit on the shelf when it was completed. Plans demand action and that's what United Brownsville is about. We are excited to begin the implementation phase of the plan."
Oh, really? Well, the last time we looked, no one had voted for Fred to head anything. He chose to throw the mantle of the rich man's burden upon himself and uplift the unwashed masses.
The good banker that he is, Rusteberg's financial institution has not contributed one thin dime to this project. Rather, the public is being led by the nose on its own nickel.United Brownsville is a non-profit corporation that has no funds of its own. Rather, it survives and pays its staff by extracting a $25,000 "goodwill" tribute from the City of Brownsville, Greater Brownsville Incentive Corporation, Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation, Brownsville Independent School District, Brownsville Public Utilities Board, University of Texas at Brownsville, Texas Southmost College, and the Port of Brownsville.
In this way, the non-profit can pay McAllen reject's Brian Godinez salary of $38,000 to be its "facilitator and communications director" and Mike Gonzalez, the former mayor of Kyle and a Tea Party conservative Republican handpicked by Rusteberg to head United Brownsville' as its director at $85,000 a year. But don;t be deceived. Gonzales is a Tea Party conservative in name only.
After Gonzalez left his position as Kyle mayor, he left behind a debt-strapped city. A whopping 87 percent of the debt the City of Kyle now holds was issued under Gonzalez’s leadership as Mayor. And that debt – when you add-in interest – is over $100 million dollars.
In the last two years of his administration, the city raised its property tax rate from 27.07 cents per $100 of taxable value to 42.4 cents, with more than half of the present rate going towards debt service.
In other words, he is very conservative with his money, but he has no qualms about having spending someone else's cash: the taxpayers. How popular was Gonzales when he resigned as mayor to run for Hays County Precinct 2 commissioner? He was thumped in the Republican primary by Hays CISD Trustee Mark Jones who took 77.9 percent of the vote. A real winner, that one.
United Brownsville also used your cash to pay the lobbying firm of Patton Boggs LLP $75,000 for three months of work. The work-product?
A blustery, economic development-catch-all phrase document that lacks any type of codification or ordinance authority that future city commissions – or anyone else for that matter – has to adhere to. In other words, a con.
And while we're asking questions, just part of the mission of educating the children of one of the poorest districts in the entire State of Texas  if not the United States have to do with giving this gang the people's money? What part of the mission does United Brownsville fulfill to the education of our students?
We know Escobedo and some of the BISD board members want to rub shoulders with the Big Boys in town. But they should remember that the Big Boys didn't elect them to look out for the interest of the students and taxpayers of this district. The voters and taxpayers did. Do well by them or face the consequences.