MARTINEZ CONTINUES TO GIVE AWAY CITY ASSETS

By Juan Montoya
Does anyone have Da Mayor Tony Martinez's ear?
If someone does – and I don't mean the Pope – could you tell him that we elected him to be the representative of the people of Brownsville and not the regents of the University of Texas System.
We have pointed out in these cyberpages the many instances where he has pulled the rug from under the taxpayers of the City of Brownsville to bend over backwards to hand property or buildings to the UT System for a song while at the same time occasionally swooping down from his three offices to plunder the city coffers or the assets of Texas Southmost College to offer them – a la Salome – to UT.
If you have the same morbid curiosity some of us have to read the bid notices on the far-back pages of the local daily, you would have noticed that the city is advertising for the paving of something called the "Cueto Building Parking Plaza I."
This grand-sounding name alludes to a quarter block of empty land on the corner of 14th and Madison streets that once housed three squalid dwellings consisting of two old buildings and a converted trailer. The buildings were since demolished and removed.
The last tenant was Brownsville founder Charles Stillman's love shack that was ingloriously dumped on the city by a savvy Corpus Christi Historical Society who wanted to get rid of the eyesore. Now the city is responsible for restoring the shack and maintaining it for the public forever and ever. There's one born every day, they say.
That little gem now adorns the Linear Park surrounded by deteriorating art pieces made from old tires and other recyclable materials and upended heads of Greek statues. Talk about the detritus of past glories.
But we digress.
 The UTB and city entered into a  four-year lease that would grant the University of Texas Board of Regents the Cueto Building and the adjacent Lucena House for general office and educational use beginning Sept. 1. The Lucena Building is now occupied by the offices of the United Brownsville executive director and staff. The Cueto Building is now housing the UTB's Center for Civic Engagement.
According to the local daily, "In lieu of paying $10 per square foot annually in rent, the terms of the lease stipulate that the tenant will make parking lot improvements to the property adjacent to the leased property. The lease also dictates that there are four one-year options included in the lease, each with a base rate of $10 per square foot annually or about $92,580 per year."
This is very enlightening because the city is currently renting the property adjacent to the Cueto and Lucena buildings at $2,500 per month for three years, which means that it will pay the renter $90,000 after those 36 months.
The rental agreement with the owner stipulates that after the three-year rental is over, the city has an option to buy at a the $155,000 appraised value. The city wants to let UTB have full use of the whole half block of property in return for them paving the parking lot. In other words, the residents, after four years, will get the parking lot in return, not even a wash.
The scheming to hand over the full use of city property to the UT System for a song has been in the works for a couple of years and now with the bid notice invitation to pave the parking lot, it's coming to fruition. Is this anyway to run a railroad?