Thursday, June 19, 2014

JEFF JOHNSTON'S SWAN SONG, ON WAY TO MCALLEN


By Juan Montoya
Coming on the heels of the hiring of a new city planner and another assistant city manager, Asst. City Manager Jeff Johnston is heading off to greener pastures with the City of McAllen.
City sources tell us that Johnston has handed in his resignation to the  city manager and city commissioners.
The city hired Ruth Osuna as assistant city manager starting last April. Ozuna had been the City Manager for Eloy, Arizona for the past three years, and joined Pete Gonzales and Johnston as assistants to Charlie Cabler, who has been city manager since 2002.
Although the furthest south that Osuna has lived was in San Antonio, she brings a wealth of experience to the job. She has both management and director experience from 1983 to the present.
The city also replaced acting city planner Ramiro Gonzalez who had has been serving as Interim Director while the city continued its search.The new director of planning is on Michael Warrix, who began serving June 2.
Interestingly, Warrix has no municipal planning experience and what little he has is limited to working for civil engineering firms in Kentucky and Georgia who did business with Atlanta and Lexington.
How the city administration and commissioners decide to choose someone without any planning experience in Texas is another one of the Great Mysteries of City of Brownsville government. Was this yet another example of Mayor Martinez and United Brownsville wagging the dog?
With Jonston's departure, Cabler's staff is made up of Pete Gonzalez, Deputy City Manager for Finance and Osuna.
Bon voyage, Jeff.



6 comments:

Anonymous said...

McAllen gets another quality hire from Brownsville. McAllen has a police chief, a health director and now Jeff from Brownsville. McAllen pays and has developed a quality city administration while we continue to seek people who are "yes men" to the city administration. Brownsville's loss is McAllen's gain. We are yet to see what the new hires bring to Brownsville. How long will they last???? Good luck Jeff.

Anonymous said...

God bless Jeff! He's a good man; Brownsville's loss for sure.

Anonymous said...

Don't blame him for leaving,Frownsville home of the crabs and the wana be somebody elitist.

Anonymous said...

Jeff Johnston is leaving behind a bunch of crooks he covered for. Human resources, the health department and the Brownsville public library were some of his biggest cover ups.

Anonymous said...

Good luck Jeff. Smart move for you but I would have left the valley for anywhere past the check point.

Anonymous said...

On to greener pastures !!!

rita