MARIN SIGHTING: BUTTONHOLING FOR UNITED BROWNSVILLE

By Juan Montoya
Every so often, our eyes and ears in the field report to us that they have sighted United Brownsville maven  (and owner of Ambiotec Group, the city's favorite vendor) Carlos Marin buttonholing some member of the board of the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation or member of the Public Utilities Board in some corner of a trendy restaurant of shoppe (with an e) and we know he's up to his tricks.

Marin, after all, is the magician who transformed the failed $1 million Imagine Brownsville comprehensive plan into a pot of gold. You remember that plan. It's the one that was supposed to get Brownsville some cash from the U.S. Congress when Eddie Treviño was still the mayor of Brownsville. However, the two main congressional supporters of the plan were defeated and the city's requests got nowhere.
Seeing that there was more to be had than the $1 million (plus additional city assets) that he had been able to wring from the city, Marin enlisted the help of city movers and shakers to get the city commission, the PUB, the Port, and another five publicly-funded entities to "adopt" the plan and fund it at $25,000 each to keep Imagine Brownsville – now warmed over as United Brownsville – alive and scamming.
He, IBC President Fred Rusteberg, UTB President Julieta Garcia and banker-cum-academic Irv Downing – formed what they called the United Brownsville Coordinating Board and – with the $200,000 in "membership" contributions – hired an executive director to do their bidding.
They formed a United Brownsville board that consisted of people from the eight entities and set about to do business. That business was the hijacking of elected and representative government handed over on a silver platter to these bunch to do as they saw fit with the people's money.
Already funded at $25,000 each by the City of Brownsville, the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation (GBIC), the Brownsville Independent School District, the Brownsville Navigation District, the Brownsville Public Utilities Board, the Brownsville Community Improvement Corp (BCIC) and the University of Texas-Brownsville/Texas Southmost College, they looked around for more carrion for their craw.
They quickly alighted on the annual $4 million in quarter-cent sales tax allotted to the GBIC. The sister sales-tax entity – the Brownsville Community Incentives Corporation – had already been encumbered and mortgaged well into the next two decades by the construction of the $25 million Brownsville Sports Park. Nothing there.

It just happened to appear to some that every time that the GBIC had some decision to make about giving away the public money, Marin was seen in some corner of some restaurant talking to one of its members or some of its benefactors.
Some of our eyes and ears remember seeing him with GBIC member Jessica Tetreau-Kalifa at Toscafino's before a GBIC meeting where VIDA was asking for it's monthly $20,000 to uplift dropouts (they never did  identify them). The interesting thing about this is that Marin is a board member of VIDA. He's also a board member of the Brownsville Economic Development Council, which vetted that program's application for funding from GBIC.
Marin also has a stake in the fortunes of San Antonio-based Jacob's Engineering. The firm was awarded a $185,000 contract to identify economic "clusters" and suggest funding to implement them. It just to happens that the local operations manager for that firm is none other than Oscar Garcia Jr., the son of UTB President Juliet Garcia, a member of the UB "coordinating" board.
Garcia Jr. was on the PUB board when its members approved the payment of $454,000 for yet another "comprehensive study drafted by Robin McCaffrey of Needham, McCaffrey and Associates. That firm was the same one used by United Brownsville CEO Mike Gonzalez when he was mayor of Kyle, Texas to perform, you guessed it, a "comprehensive study."
Anyway, Oscar The Young can smell a buck a mile away and resigned from his seat on the PUB board and joined Jacob's Engineering, even though he is not one. Before that, he was the "operations manager" for Su Clinica Familiar which is run by...Marin's wife, a doctor.
Marin, by the way, couldn't fight the temptation to grab some of the goodies since a section of the "comprehensive" $454,000 was doled out to his Ambiotec Group who rehashed an environmental section on affected  plants and animals. How much did he pocket? No one  is saying.
Tereau-Kalifa, Al Villarreal and David Betancourt voted to award the cash to young Son of Oscar sight unseen without any backup or scope of work and it probably helped that Marin was present along with other United Brownsville bigwigs to urge on the more-than-plant GBIC troika.
Unfortunately, they never knew – or cared to hear? – that the U.S. Dept. of Commerce already identified these "clusters" and provides the information free to any city in the country that wants them. At a recent meeting, United Brownsville CEO Gonzalez asked a Dept. of Commerce administrator if the government could share the information with the city and the bureaucrat said "yes."
So just what is the $185,000 paying for?  
Just today Marin and the Oscar The Young were sighted tet-a-teting at the Starbucks on Ruben Torres Highway (FM 802) over their designer coffee.
If the past is any guide to what may have been planned at the meeting, it's time to grab your wallet and keep an eye on the GBIC treasury.