MARTINEZ'S DOG-AND-PONY SHOW YIELDED SMOKE AND MIRRORS, FEW TANGIBLE RESULTS

“If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”
― W.C. Fields

By Juan Montoya

Those who paid good money to hear the praises of the Tony Martinez, Fred Rusteberg, and Julieta Garcia dog-and-pony show probably felt a little cheated at the display of smoke and mirrors Hizzonner and his sleight-of-hand assistants put on for them on Tuesday.

And while the event was billed as a report on the state of the city, it featured the usual suspects associated with United Brownsville dazzling the rubes. Garcia and Rusteberg, not to mention Wizard of Oz Carlos Marin pulling the strings behind the curtain, were featured prominently in the presentation. Neither of these three denizens is elected by the residents of the city yet they talk and act like they own it.

If you didn't plunk down your hard-earned money to attend the amateurish production, you didn't miss much. It was a scripted, stilted enunciation of what the United Brownsville perpetrators would want everyone to believe: That the current administration – with its globe hopping to the Ukraine and Colombia – are working in earnest to fill the city coffers with global trade. Yet, in all the hoopla and taped messages displayed on screen at the Brownsville Events Center Tuesday, there was nary an example of any hard tangible results from the junkets Martinez and the gurus of the Brownsville Economic Development Council have taken.

Instead, in their wake, and not featured in their resumes lies the detritus of failed enterprises like Titan Tire, the North Industrial Park, T-Mobile, etc.,

Need we mention the fact that this mayor, who wore the coming of AeroMexico to the Brownsville airport as a feather in his cap, never mentioned in his message that fly-by-night airliner had departed after the "incentives" ran out and it couldn't fill its seat without the free money? 

And looming in the future is the multimillionaire speculation in downtown real estate, the red-flag deal with Tenaska to "partner" in the construction of an electric generating plant, and the city placing all its eggs in the SpaceX venture of billionaire Elon Musk who has already gotten promises from the BEDC of at least $6 million in taxpayer money as "incentives." 

The Hollywood-style production put on by the mayor and his cronies that we are all in awe of the fireworks emanating from the Emerald City. At least, that's the impression that the 500 or so who attended received from the production.

The boys in McAllen put n a better show where Mayor Richard Cortez lays out the state of his town.

First of all, there is no charge to the public so that their mayor can tell them, in a building they paid for, the state of their public realm. Cortez, by the way, does not interview the local head banker as Martinez did Rusteberg. They also do not play banal prerecorded interviews with other elected officials and illustrious local residents. They simply tell you the truth and don't sugar coat it with their illusions.

There was no talk of the annual "transfer" of $4 or $5 million (sometimes more the the city needs a prestamito) from PUB to the municipal treasury, but there is praise for the city's "healthy" finances. What, we wonder, would happen if the city commission didn't raid the PUB every year? Would our rates go down?

What, we ask, would happen if the city had to ask the citizens to vote on whether they want to indebt themselves with $11 million in Certificates of Obligation to lure the oil-and-gas wealthy UT System to consider staying downtown?
And even though he touched on the bond ratings for the city, Martinez conveniently didn't mention that Fitch Ratings has downgraded $425 million in PUB bonds because of the utility's over-extension of its finances with the electric plant. Asa mayor, Martinez sist in on the PUB as a ex-oficio member. 

This mayor, who now enjoys the $500,000 digs provided to him personally by the city to share with United Brownsville at the Cueto Building, has not deigned to seek a closer relationship with his neighbors in Matamoros, but instead spends his time jaunting around the globe in search of global markets. After all, we share four international bridges with out neighbors in Tamaulipas and the foundries of Monclova and investors in Monterrey make up the bulk of the city's trading partners. McAllen's Cortez, in contrast, has hosted the governor of Tamaulipas to a dinner in his honor. Martinez, Garcia and Rusteberg instead celebrated Sergio Arguelles, said by the Mexican government to be a front for former Tamaulipas Governor Tomas Yarrington, with a gala dinner at Garcia's university and made him a linchpin in Unidos Matamoros, the Mexican counterpart to the United Brownsville scam.

None of these realities were heard by the 500 spellbound attendees at the Events Center. Instead we heard the same platitudes by the usual suspects. And that just about what the state of the city is right now, suspect.