THE CARDENAS SUBDIVISION WELFARE ACT, PART II

By Juan Montoya
Once again to the river, or in this case, maybe the flood zone.
Such would be a acceptable subtitle to the current debate going on within the Cameron County Commissioners Court over the pedestrian issue of whether subdivisions on dedicated county roads should be required to provide their residents with sidewalks.
In an age where the State of Texas and the Texas Water Development Board lauds its Model Subdivision Rules that pretty much control what amenities are required by law to be installed in new subdivisions before they are accepted by counties, Cameron County still seems to be leaning backwards to please recalcitrant developers who would dearly love to cut corners and provide residents with as little as possible.
The issue, believe it or not, harks back to the days when current Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos had just come on board as Pct. 2 commissioner and the City of Brownsville passed a requirement that new subdivisions int its five-mile extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) contain roads and sidewalks and provide drainage for its streets.
That raised a howl from developers who claimed it would prevent them from doing their Christian duty to provide low-income housing for the poor people in the county. If the City of Brownsville's rules stood, poor people would be left homeless wandering the streets and living under highway overpasses.
These are the same developers who for decades had successfully resisted paying a reasonable Impact Fee to the Public Utility Board. Until Pat Ahumada beat Ernie Hernandez for mayor of the city did the utility raise the impact fee from a ridiculous $288 per lot to a more reasonable impact fee of a little over $3,000. After studies costing nearly $500,000, the city commission approved the new fee, albeit lower than the $4,200 recommended in the studies.
Developers like Renato Cardenas, and others who had made a fortune building on the outskirts of cities where they could build their subdivisions cutting corners on septic tank use, rural grade roads instead of city-grade, open ditches instead of underground drainage, went to the commission to protest the proposed new changes.
After some haggling with the county engineer, they came up with a workable plan that would protect their interests. The commissioners approved the continuance of their practices from the three-mile to five-mile space within the ETJ. IN other words, they would be exempt from providing the quality construction for their subdivisions if they were between the three- and five-mile area in the city's ETJ.
At the time then-county judge Tony Garza jokingly called the court's action the "Cardenas Subdivision Welfare Act" because the main beneficiary would be Renato's cCardenas Development Company.
Now the move to require the developers to install sidewalks if the subdivision is located along a dedicated county road is meeting the same resistance. And who is protecting the interests of the developers over the residents of the subdivisions such as those of the children who must walk to the corner of the road to catch the bus or of elderly residents tho must walk to the  same corner to get their mail? Would you believe the same Cascos who protected them back then?
He sent the proposal back to engineering so that a compromise could be reached that will protect the interests of subdivisions developers, again.
It would be hard to calculate the millions that he saved Cardenas and that bunch who did not have to spend money to provide their subdivisions with city-grade amenities such as curb and gutter, sidewalks, etc. When the city's limits extend into the thee- to five-mile space in the ETJ, who do you think will have to fund the improvements to bring them up to city specs? Cardenas? Cascos?
How about the rest of the city taxpayers who already subsidized their impact fees and substandard subdivisions over the last three decades?