SHADOW GOVERNMENT (UNITED BROWNSVILLE) WORMING IN

By Jim Barton
www.meanmisterbrownsville.blogspot
Once upon a time(2010?) City Attorney Mark Sossi said that United Brownsville was not a real government entity. Here is Brownsville Herald reporter Emma Perez-Trevino's report from back in those days:

City Attorney Mark Sossi

On Nov. 5, the "Comprehensive Planning Coordination Board (CPCB) Executive Committee" met to consider and take action on a United Brownsville Memorandum of Understanding, a proclamation, and a press conference, public records show and "Imagine Brownsville" former project spokesman Brian Godinez confirmed. The public was not notified of the meeting.
Furthermore, participating entities have not yet all voted to establish a CPCB as the organizational entity responsible for coordinating the implementation of the city’s master plan.
City Attorney Mark Sossi’s position is that the committee is "informal" and is not subject to the Texas Open Meetings Act or to the Texas Public Information Act, which are state statutes aimed at providing transparency, accountability and safeguarding the public’s right to know.
"It is not a governing board. It has no governmental power," Sossi said Monday of the CPCB and its components, which also include a task force and a technical support group. The board’s leadership makes up the executive committee, public records further show.
My how things have changed. The original comprehensive "plan" sits on city shelves gathering dust like a vintage $900,000 comic book. Nothing from the plan was ever implemented. Now, the clever drawings of "paradisaic' Brownsville appear as outdated as the 50's Mechanics Illustrated hovercraft.
What HAS changed is that the unelected, non-governmental, "informal" board now WANTS to be recognized as a "governing board." In a 180 degree turn from the Sossi pontifications of several years ago, the United Brownsville Coordinating Board now wants compliance with the Public Information Act.

Fred Rusteberg, IBC Bank President
and a Tri-Chair of United Brownsville

Monthly, its meetings are posted on the windows of the City Commission building, actually signed by the City Secretary. Cleverly, the board has accepted the membership of the mayor and two commissioners on the board. City Manager Charlie Cabler, also a board member, usually sits in a chair along the wall as if he were an off-duty policeman providing security.
In the years since Sossi declared United Brownsville an innocuous, informal board, not bound by rules affecting actual governing entities, UB has acted like an insidious computer virus, infecting city government, becoming the City Commission in a weird parallel universe. Remember the Mayor's report on the resaca project or the presentation on curbside recycling? The last United Brownsville Board meetings discussed those projects as if their own. I kid you not!
Fast forward to March 4, 2014. City Attorney Mark "It's Legal" Sossi struts to the podium to present an agenda item:  17. Consideration and ACTION on Resolution Number 2014-034, in support of the creation of a Bioned Coordinating Board to be made up by Equal Representation from United Brownsville, Imagina Matamoros, and the City of Harlingen in order to promote and plan the development of the Bi-Ned Zone. (Commissioners D. Portillo/R. Gowen)
Here, United Brownsville is positioning itself as a player in the development of an area with HUGE financial potential, the industrial corridor along FM 550 including the Port of Brownsville.(So-called Public Hearing items 7,8 and 9 at the 3/4/14 CC meeting were presented by City Planner Ramiro Gonzalez to protect those plots in the corridor.) The main players in United Brownsville want to control the development of this corridor for personal enrichment. Tony Martinez is their willing pawn. Carlos Marin, the CEO of Ambiotec and mastermind of the Imagine Brownsville Plan, is said to own a good deal of property in the designated "corridor."

Mean Mister Brownsville with Robin McCaffrey

Actually, without fanfare, the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation paid nearly a half million dollars($454,592.08) for a plan for the industrial corridor, including the Port of Brownsville. Here is an excerpt from our October 31, 2013 article: "Robin McCaffrey of Needham-McCaffrey and Associates, Inc. moderated the third leg of a slide show presentation to the GBIC on October 31, outlining an overall plan for a 22,000 acre industrial corridor including the Port of Brownsville. Earlier, the Port of Brownsville and Public Utilities Board heard the same proposal.
"The plan organizes the Port of Brownsville and the surrounding area south of the port and east of the Brownsville/South Padre Island Airport. Specific areas are segmented for heavy industry, light industry and organized according to power and water usage. Simply lining up industry along the ship channel is discouraged, but companies with similar energy and/or infrastructure needs are organized perpendicular to the channel.
McCaffrey preached to the choir as he stated that extending the airport runway to 12,000 feet and dredging out the ship channel were prerequisites to the plan's implementation."
With respect to the development of this industrial corridor, I received two emails: Anonymous:
"If you look at this Jim, this plan is directly tied with Imagine Brownsville. Carlos Marin is the one that brought this firm to Brownsville and he was the one that worked hand in hand to get this study done. It accomplishes nothing but gives credence to the imagine Brownsville document. It is another pipe dream that in all costs over two billion dollars. When is the community going to wake up and stop giving money to Marin? They are going after commissioners for giving a family member a job, but a guy that steals millions from the community is free to roam and keep stealing.
Anonymous:
"Marin is behind this corridor also Jim. He owns interest all around the corridor. He is the biggest thief in Brownsville. He is pushing now to make Oscar Garcia Jr. the director at GIBIC,..his trusted puppet. The item was tabled in yesterday."
Those emails alerted me to the Bined 2013 Summit at UTB's Gran Salon December 6, 2013. This forum brought speakers from Eastern Europe, Central America and the U.S. government, but largely overlooked locals. The mayors of Brownsville, Harlingen and Matamoros were present, but merely to introduce the program. Congressman Filemon Vela was sort of a chairman, introducing speakers.(Someone close to Filemon told me he doubted Vela understood how presumptuous it was for United Brownsville to represent the region.)
Development of the Port of Brownsville and whatever industrial corridor is designated will benefit Brownsville. It will particularly benefit those who have orchestrated, controlled and steered that development for personal enrichment, presumptuously and opportunistically using the United Brownsville scam as a guise for their greed.