CITY ADMINISTRATION HUNKERS DOWN ON LOONY LENNY

By Juan Montoya
You gotta hand it to Mayor Tony Martinez and City Manager Charlie Cabler.
If anything, they are loyal to those loyal to them.
Never mind that Brownsville Fire Chief Lenny Perez has shown himself to be a vainglorious, petty and back-stabbing bureaucracy survivor. Never mind that current and former firefighters have testified before the city commission that they don't respect or trust him as a leader. Never mind that he has shown more than once
that he is not above stealing the plaudits of valor he never earned.
Lenny, who will do as the administration bids, is their boy.
He has always been the consummate Brownsville bureaucracy survivor. He know just what buttons to push and his unerring sense of tells him just where to put his nose and kiss up to the brass. He's their kind of guy.
But those who know Lenny up close and personal know he's a vindictive, vicious little man who has clawed up his way to the top of the fire ladder stepping on those he can, and discarding the principles that make a fire department a band of brothers. Lenny has none.
We have, in the past, outlined our complaints – as did the firefighters union Tuesday before the city commission – of his foibles and vanity. They are the stuff of squalor and backbiting associated with little people stealing the spotlight from the people who actually perform the deeds.
Thirteen years ago, after the collapse of the Queen Isabella causeway, and when plaudits rained down upon the firefighters and EMS personnel who rescued the victims from the drink below, Perez proudly received recognition in the form of a congressional resolution from then-U.S. Congressman Solomon Ortiz for his personnel and other entities for the gallant rescue of the victims.
Perez accepted the congressional resolution for the firefighters and EMS personnel but failed to mention to the assembled crowd that they hadn't been notified of the impending ceremony and he unilaterally decided to accept it in public on their behalf.
Partly as a result of the media coverage, Perez was elevated from interim chief and selected from among four others to head the BFD.
"He said that if they recognized one or two the rest of the firefighters would be resentful so he decided to receive the recognition himself," said a firefighter who was at the rescue scene. "They claimed they couldn't locate them, when in fact some of them were on duty at the time."
In fact, one of them was given the resolution in his name when he came back to the station after having applied life-saving techniques to an elderly victim of a massive cardiac arrest.
"My supervisor just handed it to me in the hallway and said that Lenny had accepted it on my behalf," said the hero. "He knew exactly where I was because he assigned me there so I wouldn't be able to receive the award."
That same firefigher and paramedic left the BFD and worked in Kosovo and elsewhere and when he returned to Brownsville, Perez refused to rehire him even though he had rehired others who left on bad terms.
This is the same Loony Lenny who never advised the rank and file firefighters and EMS personnel about a ceremony to honor their brothers who fell in the line of duty. But Lenny did make it in time to get a photo taken with Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez and Cheezmeh poster girl Linda Dragustinovis. Ah, the perks of leadership!

You remember Lenny. He's the same Lenny that allowed his underlings to send Station 6 personnel and fire trucks to Vela Intermediate for a Fire Prevention Week presentation only to have a fire break out in an apartment in nearby Coffeeport (now on the stretch renamed Jaime Zapata) that led to the death of a child.

Since the crews were making a presentation at Vela, the fire crew from the station on Old Alice Road had to be sent there, only to arrive too late to prevent the fatality. That resulted in a lawsuit being filed against the city and a settlement paid to the family.
Then there was the occasion where Perez issued an indefinite leave of absence as a disciplinary action to firefighter Marco Longoria after he refused to submit to having a drug test performed on him by an authoritative clinic technician but had it performed at another site by certified personnel that same day.

Lenny took umbrage at Longoria and issued the edict. After costing the city thousands to defend his actions, a panel ruled against the city and Longoria was given his job back and stayed with the department until he retired earlier this year.
Lenny took that to Ric Navarro – the city's Harlingen contract attorney making a mint off mediation – and lost. Navarro smiled all the way to the bank, and still is.
Then there was the case of the pet dog adopted by the firefighters at Station 6 that caused Perez to go ballistic, and he personally went to the station to take custody of the offensive pooch. Even though there was a whole station crew there, Perez singled out members of the union and sought to write them up for the incident.

He lost that one, too.
The latest foible wasn't the one that involved Juan Pablo Casanova, who died after suffering a heart attack at the fire station. Lenny backpedaled from his earlier statements that he would deny his widow compensation and called on his buddy in Austin to cover his back. Everyone else knows what he said and that he only changed his tune when the heat got unbearable. But what would he know about heat? Local firefighters know Perez and the number of fires he has under his belt can be counted on one hand.
But if Cabler and Martinez are willing to overlook those as personal quirks, how about Lenny's recommendation that the city hire a firm to teach a basic paramedic course to 15 firefighters at a cost of $67,000 that turned out not to be certified by the state to teach it? Fifteen firefighters are out of four months of training with nothing to show for it and the city $67,000. The publiccannot count on 15 firefighters to provide their life-saving services.
Just what is the city's threshold on incompetence by this man? Or do they even care as long as he does what he is told?