WE ARE INDEED A GIVING PEOPLE

By Juan Montoya
It is enlightening to read about Hizzoner Da Mayor Tony Martinez visiting with millionaire Elon Musk (SpaceASK) on Valentine's Day and trying to be sweet with him so he can bring his brand of economic love to Browntown.
The newspaper accounts don't mention the sweet nothings that Martinez whispered in Musk's ear, but what can you possibly give a man who has everything?
Did he tell him, for example, that the spot that SpaceX said it is perhaps interested in constructing the launching site is next to a subdivision named after Kopernick Shores, the same Copernicus of astronomy fame?
Or perhaps that the city and its residents might just sweeten the pie even more than the $6 million already promised to Musk if he would only deign to set up business at Boca Chica? Or that he could swing even more than the Brownsville Economic Development Council than the $200,000 they contributed to Gov. Perry's slush fund?
Tony is one giving guy, isn't he? After all, he is trying to give away millions of real estate to the oil-and-gas wealthy University of Texas System so they can stay in downtown Brownsville, at least $200 million in utility rate increases to pay for a quarter of a gas-powered electricity plant for Tenaska which will buy one-quarter of the plant but won't agree to release the terms of the agreement, and spends thousands of dollars on his say-so without even running it by the rest of the commission or the city manager.
That's in keeping with the Brownsville tradition, however.
Before Martinez came around, United Brownsville - of which he is a principal - had hit upon at least eight governmental and quasi-governmental entities (all tax funded, of course) for a mere $25,000 annual handout each fund its operations to pay a nice cushy salary to its executive director and its "facilitator" and their underlings. He even chipped in a $240,000 property to build them a parking lot so their Lexus and BMWs won't be subject t petty theft and they won't have to search for a parking spot downtown like the rest of us.
Up to this year, all eight, except for the Brownsville Independent School District, have al forked out their bucks to this shadow government which is accountable to no one and elected by no one but its own self-perpetuating board.
Before that, another of the United Brownsville cadre, UTB President Juliet Garcia, wanted to make the  85-year-old community Texas Southmost College district and its $200 million in real estate, assets, and bank deposits, a present to the UT System. However, Juliet wasn't going to leave the community high and dry. She was willing to allow the taxing district to keep the bond-issue debt of more than $50 million and then allow it to be dissolved.
Of course, the $15 million in rent arrears tat the deadbeat UT System owed the TSC district would be a "wash." At least four pesky TSC trustees, however, remembered their fiduciary duties to the TSC voters and grinched out on Juliet, bless their little heart.
Forgive and forget, I guess.
At the county, its sand dune protection ordinances are forgotten once the price is right, or once the money boys start whispering sweet nothings in the ears of the county parks administrator and commissioners. Now that someone has called them on it, what excuses can they give the state for destroying the dune with a retaining wall that was obviously against the county's own beach access rules?
This is no different than the sham perpetrated by Parks Department administrator Javier Mendez when he held an informal "informational meeting" with sand dune and beach access advocates at a local restaurant and then informed the state that the public hearing requirement of the State of Texas had been met.
Then, voila! A commercial hotel goes up on Isla Blanca county park property since no one objected at the "public" hearing.
Oh, yeah! We are indeed a giving people.
Now that the UT System has decided to consolidate the administration of UT PanAm and UTB with the medical research center paid for in bits and pieces (a la Jeffrey Dahmer), they will expect the residents of the TSC district to join yet another taxing district to pay for the medical center district as well. Never mind that the TSC taxpayers have already "transferred" some $1 billion to the UT System over the 22-year "partnernship" between TSC and UTB and have maintained the taxing district as a cash cow for Juliet and her minions.
What did we get in return?
How about a dismal 17 percent graduation rate over six years, less than a 50 percent retention rate for freshmen, and the highest tuition and user-fee rates in the entire state?
Are we at the Rrun-Rrun the only ones to see this pattern of our "leaders" selling us down the river? Or is the majority content with what these overpaid underachievers are doing with our scant resources?