QUESTIONS ON CITY CERTIFICATION, ROSALES' RESIDENCE

By Juan Montoya
No sooner had the City of Brownsville Secretary Estela Van Hatten certified all eight candidates for inclusion May 11 election for three positions on the city commission that questions about the process and the residency of at least one candidate have surfaced.
Although the city counsel and the secretary said the candidates' petitions containing 100 signatures had been certified, they also said that the Texas Election Code calls for only 25 signatures from voters registered inside their voting districts.
Yet, according to some interpretations, if the city charter requirement that at least 100 signatures are required, the charter would supersede the state code.
That issue should be decided, some say, before the ballots are printed.
 As of this past Friday, only District 3 candidate Martin Sarkis, District 4 incumbent John Villarreal, and At-Large "B" incumbent Rose Gowen's signatures had been verified by the city secretary's staff. Over the weekend, an email from the secretary's office announced that all the candidates' signatures had been verified and had been declared qualified to be included on the ballot.
That means that, aside from Sarkis, Debbie Portillo, David Belleperche, and Rosalio "Leo" Rosales, are certified to run for District 3.
Villarreal, in turn, will run against Letty Garzoria, for District 4, and Gowen will face Robert Uresti for the at-large seat.
However, there are some questions regarding the candidacy of Rosales in the District 3 race formerly held by Melissa Zamora, who chose o to run in this election.
According to notarized documentation he filed with the city when he applied to be placed on the ballot on March 1, the last day to file, he listed his address as 5810 Hitching Post, inside the district, and stated under oath that he has lived there for the last seven years.  That address is north of Alton Gloor and intersects with Stillman Road.
Yet, we have learned that on March 4, three days after he swore he lived there, Rosales went to the Cameron County Elections Office and changed his voting address from 1029 Squaw Valley, south of Alton Gloor to the Hitching Post address.
A google search for that address reveals that Rosales is listed as the owner of the Squaw Valley address and that Rosalio Rosales Jr. is listed at the Hitching Post address. A real estate website indicates that the home was built in 2006, exactly seven years ago. Are they one and the same?
And if Rosales – the candidate –stated that he has lived at the Hitching Post residence for the last seven years, why was he registered and voted from the Squaw Valley address ever since 1996? Has he been voting in District 4 as late as of last November? Obviously, if on his voting card as of March 4, 2013, the Squaw Valley address was listed as his home, Rosales has had to have voted in District 4, John Villarreal's district.
So how can it be that he is now claiming that his residence for the last seven years has been at the Hitching Post address? Something is definitely wrong here and the city has to address this issue before the ballots are printed and someone challenges the election on that basis.
It's intriguing that there was n article today on the front page of the Brownsville Herald where Rosales is quoted as its executive director of the place where they hold garage sales to feed the homeless. You can't ask for better advertisement than to get on the news columns of the local daily if you're  a decalred candidate. Any newspaper worth its salt knows that the rule of thumb is to steer a neutral path unless they're going to do a story on each candidate's place of employment.
Will he still be their darling if it turns out he does not live in the district he is running for? As Yogi Berra (corrected) used to say, "it's deja vu all over again."