AMERICAN SURVEILLANCE BLACKBALLED BY LOCAL ENTITIES

By Juan Montoya
As writers of articles critical of the way Brownsville-based American Surveillance has allegedly used politics and patronage jobs with the Brownsville Independent School District to garner security contracts in with the Mission, Mercedes and San Benito ISDs, you'd think that we'd be tickled pink when we heard that the firm had been turned down for the contract with the Texas Southmost College.
But we're not.
As we understand it, Jaime Escobedo's American Surveillance security contract bid was some $150,000 lower than American Investigations and Security International's bid of some $296,000.
Think about it.
The TSC trustees were willing to have their taxpayers pay almost double the amount for the same scope of services because someone didn't like the principals of the company.
That's right. Jaime Escobedo is BISD President Enrique Escobedo's brother, with all the political baggage that entails. Distrust and suspicion seemed to be the guiding principal for TSC trustees to reject the company's low bid in favor of a more costly one.
The same thing happened to the company in its bid with the City of Brownsville. Even though the company's bid was lower than the other six companies for the same specifications required by the city's purchasing department, a core group of commissioners spearheaded by the brilliant Jessica Tetreau-Kalifa and her cohort Estela Chavez-Vasquez convinced a majority of the commission to table the item and perform the security tasks in-house.
For the record, when the company took over the contract three years ago, the city was willingly paying more than $800,000 a year for security services at some 20 municipal facilities. At the end of the contract, that number had been slashed to below $600,000 and the new bid was even lower than that. Instead of taking the lowest bidder, the city decided to spend more than double that amount to provide the services in-house. That means paying new employees everything a city pays: health insurance, retirement, overtime, benefits, vacation time, etc., as well as salaries in line with other municipal employees.
And because of that about 30 personnel (men and women) of the security company were put out of work.
Experience has shown that when government performs a service, the costs always skyrocket compared to the private sector.
Politics, apparently, got in the way and everything went to hell in  hand basket.
Commissioner Tereau-Kalifa made it no secret that she didn't want the company hired by the city to the point where the firm's attorneys sent her a cease-and-desist letter warning her of potential lawsuit coming her way if she didn't. She did. But since communications between commissioners in executive session and between themselves is privileged, what she told them behind the scenes was apparently enough to let her have her way.
Remember that during her election campaign three year ago, she accused the company of helping former city commissioner Charlie Atkinson prove that she lived outside the district where she was running (and she was) by placing surveillance cameras to document it. That move made Atkinson even less electable than he was to begin with and he lost. Voters overlooked the bald-faced lie that Tetreau-Kalifa lived with her parents. After she won, she had to move inside the district to the home where she now resides.
But that grudge has lived on  inside Ms. Tetreau-Kalifas' craw and turning down American Surveillance's lowest bid and making taxpayers foot the bill for her comeuppance gave her the perfect opportunity to get even. Revenge, it is said, is sweet, especially when someone else foots the bill.
We don't know the inside workings of the TSC board and what went on in the boardroom. We do know that TSC vice-president for finance and administration was talking out of his keister when he said that by giving the contract to the more expensive company because he said "security services are unique to each company compared to the request for proposals for computers which are all the same."
Come now Chet (can we call you Chet?), you provide the specifications of services, the companies respond to the Request For Proposals based on the specifications you provide, and everyone get a level playing field.  The administration presents the bid tabulations and they choose the best deal for the taxpayers of the district.
What went wrong in the process in the TSC security contract process? What untold aspects of the job weren't specified in  the RFP?
Someone who had it in for the Escobedos decided to pass on the difference of the cost (about $150,000 more) between American Surveillance and American Investigations to the taxpayer for no specific reason.

When grudges and unfounded suspicion begin to creep in and guide the hand of governance we're back to an era we thought this board had left behind.
If you hold animosity and bad will toward a person or company, it does not make it right for you to get even with them by passing on the cost of your grudge (about $1 million for the city and $150,000 for TSC) to the taxpayers you are supposed to be protecting.
So far, we know of no lawsuits of formal complaints against the company anywhere. If it can be proven that there was BISD-jobs-for-security-contracts scheme operating, we'll be the first to criticize its principals. But to blackball a Brownsville-based company based upon mere allegations and prejudice is patently unfair.