LINCOLN PARK SALE TO UT SYSTEM STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN

By Juan Montoya
Some of our regular readers probably know that we are not in favor of the City of Brownsville's "sale" of relocated Lincoln Park to the University of Texas System for a song.
More than one commenter to the blogs have charged that the $6.5 million price quoted by the city administration and UT System-lovestruck mayor and two city commissioners is a sweetheart deal that will see the 48 acres of prime city property go to the oil-and-gas wealthy UT System for a song.
Da Mayor Tony Martinez and commissioners Rose "La Chisquiada" Gowen and Debbie "Nose for Gold" Portillo make up the core of the commissioner's support for the giveaway.
Gowen is a pedal pusher who is a staunch supporter of making Brownsville the bicycle capital of South Texas and using tons of public money to do it. Included in the Request For Proposals the city offered UT is a promise to dedicate city property to construct a myriad of bike trails throughout the city and even county property.
Portillo, who used to be the secretary for the shadow government parasitic entity known as United Brownsville, has since been installed as one of the three co-chairs of the publicly-funded entity. City commissioner Estela Vasquez-Chavez, also a member of United Brownsville and an attorney, was bypassed in favor of Portillo. The Portillos once rented property from Abraham Galonsky for their jewelry store which has since been moved to Sunrise Mall. Galonsky was able to finagle a sale of half a block of buildings to the city for a mind-boggling $2.3 million. It didn't hurt that the lawyer representing him in the negotiations with the city was the matyor's legal firm partner Horacio Barrera, also, incidentally Galonsky's neighbor.
It is obvious that neither commissioners Vasquez-Chavez, Ricardo Longoria, or even John Villarreal, are considered of the silk-stocking crowd or entitled to sit at the master's table presided by Martinez, Portillo and Gowen.
But be that as it may, the commissioner who actually represents the area – District 1 commissioner Longoria – has told constituents asking about the relocation of the park if the sale is closed, that John Bruziak, the manager of the Public Utility Board, has promised him that the utility will use chemicals to mitigate the stench of sewage emanating from the treatment plant.
The city plans to relocate the park on real estate directly across the treatment plant.
When UT offiicals came to see the properties in the city's RFP, they literally turned their noses up at the flatulent aroma wafting from the plant and which would have been directly in front of the proposed campus site. They politely said "no."
Now the city is proposing to move the park to the same site and doesn't seem too concerned that kids in the East Brownsville Little League or playing on the fields will be exposed to sudden gusts of traditional southeast winds (and an occasional northern) blowing the stench over the park. And one can only imagine families having a cookout being exposed to the mouth-watering aromas of human excrement as they munch on hot dogs or a pollo asado.
Longoria apparently thinks that Bruziak's promise is as good as Portillo's gold and as vigorous as Gowen's pedal-pushing legs. But all he has to do is ask for a map that shows where the smell-mitigating chemicals have been placed in the various lift stations and treatment plants across the city and he will see that the PUB and its administration car every little if the barrios have to bear the smells.
We did.
Of about 60 applications of the chemicals by PUB, the overwhelming majority were made in areas north of Boca Chica Boulevard and perhaps only one or two to lift stations in the Southmost, Las Prietas and downtown areas.
Suddenly now, because of Da Mayor and Gowen's rapture with the UT System and their desire to entice its regents with a gift of Lincoln Park, does Longoria believe that Bruziak and the board of PUB directors will develop a sense of social justice overnight?