PUB: YOUR ELECTRIC AND WATER UTILITY RATES AT "WORK"

Q: What are you watching when you see one guy in a hole working with a shovel, and nine other guys leaning on their shovel handles watching him work?
A: A PUB work crew
Old Brownsville Joke

By Juan Montoya
So there they were, at least eight Brownsville Public Utility vehicles including a crane, three aerial buckets, supervisor trucks and other assorted PUB support vehicles and numerous personnel.
Their apparent chore? To install one metal light pole on the west side to Paredes Line Road just south of Price Road.

Granted, the pole was one of those tall ones that look like cell-phone relay towers minus the transmitter, but the word "overkill" did come to mind. Someone said that PUB operates under the philosophy of redundancy in the name of caution just in case something goes wrong. Others said that PUB has inbred hiring practices where a family member – once he gets his foot in the door – will ultimately pave the way for his cousin, the wife of his cousin, his uncle, the cousin of his uncles, brother, adopted brother, compadres, brothers and compadres of his compadre and assorted other in-laws and outlaws to come on board the gravy train.
The same goes for the City of Brownsville, Cameron County, the Brownsville Independent School District, the old UTB, Port of Brownsville, etc.,
The dictum is: Don't rock the boat, work too hard that it will make everyone else look bad, and turn a blind eye to the pilferage and petty theft that others may commit while you're there.
We know an old friend we'll call "Juanito," for lack of a better name, who has been working for as long as we can remember at the PUB. He is brutally honest whe we ask him what he does at the public utility.
"Me hago pendejo todo el dia," he responds, laughing.
When he's not doing errands for some supervisor aboard his truck, he is bringing sweet bread for the secretaries, or running errands for some department. With retirement right around the corner, he is looking forward to days of doing the same thing he is doing now: mainly, nothing.
And the head honchos? They couldn't care less. With many of them living outside the city and in condos at South Padre Island, bedroom communities in Los Fresnos and their hometown in Harlingen, it's no skin off their nose how PUB ratepayers' money is spent.
Fifteen men, eight vehicles and one electric pole; seems about right. There goes a half day's work on the PUB gravy train.