AND WE PAID $1,000s TO BE CALLED AN ALL-AMERICAN CITY?

By Juan Montoya
Quick, somebody call the All-American City judges and let them see what is happening to one city they designated wither their logo.
Then again, maybe the judges and their organization have already spent the $50,000 or so the good citizens of the City of Brownsville gave them for the designation and they are no longer interested.
All around town – from Boca Chica Boulevard, Los Ebanos, Tupilan, McDavitt, 13th Street, Security Drive Four Corners, you name it – the scene was the same, a widespread flooding that got into people cars, spread trash and debris all across the city and taxed the patchwork drainage system past its capability.
It's nothing new, really.
The city administration – starting with City Manager Charlie Cabler, the mayor and commissioners, and the rest of the city bureaucrats – will talk about retaining ponds, clean drain ditches, new studies, etc., that will not change the fact that the drainage system we have to serve this city sucks.
On Tulipan Street, carts floated down the street. On Coolidge, trash cans were carried by the waters and small whirlpools sucked trash and other debris as residents tried to clear the drains to help the water recede.
After spending millions of dollars on streets and drainage, what happens after we get a good downpour?
Yup. The usual flooding and washing away of the improvements (and patchwork) performed over the last five or six months and the cycle begins anew.
A former mayor used to say that Boca Chica Blvd. at Four Corners always flooded when a large dog took a pee. Well, looks like Fido had to relieve himself again today.
Retaining ponds and clean ditches and gutters are just stopgaps in a system that really isn’t working. In fact, it has never worked.
We recall that in an instance prior to a recent city commission election Cabler “found” $1 million to patch up potholes in streets and several commissioners then running listed all those “improvements" in their campaign ads? (Yes, we mean you Rick Longoria.)
Guess what's going to happen to those improvements aftertoday's downpours? Merely drive down our main strips and see the “patched” blackholes start to suck in our bucks again. Once again we’ll pour a few millions down the drain in patchwork and repairs until the next rains come, then again, the cycle starts anew.
In the meantime, we’ll continue ruining our cars, living in what looks like a shelled-out city and handing over our hard-earned bucks to tire and car repair shops to fix our tires, replace cracked windshields, and replace our shocks.
Sometime down the road we’re going to realize that unless we undertake a comprehensive system-wide drainage project that covers the entire city – and not just piecemeal strategies – this vicious cycle will continue to be repeated time after time ad infinitum.
Man has altered the natural flow of water in this watershed toward the river with dams upriver and a levee system that effectively prevents the water from following its natural course to the waterway. We need a series of outfalls along the river to divert the water while we gather the necessary political courage to propose the most logical solution to our flooding.
But we have a core of city commissioners who want to establish world records for zumba dancing, mass fishing parties, healthy eating, bike trials, real-estate speculation to benefit their friends, and push for other of their pet priorities. Simple, non-sexy issues like basic drainage escapes them.
Until we have a mayor and a city commission that has its priorities in place, be prepared to continue pouring money down the drain and suffer the consequences of ignoring the obvious.