RESIDENTS THINK THEY'RE GETTING A S--TTY PARK DEAL

By Juan Montoya
So now we know where the City of Brownsville City Commission wants to put the new Lincoln Park.
At first we thought that it was just a shell game and that Julieta Garcia's University of Texas at Brownsville would sell the property immediately adjacent to Los Tomates Bridge to snare the $6.5 million that the UT System had offered the city for Lincoln Park.

Now we learn that the UTB has no plans to sell that property (identified with a huge UTB sign), but that the city will move the park onto the land directly in front of the PUB East Avenue Sewage Treatment Plant.
In other words, barrio families and East Brownsville Little League Baseball players will be directly in the path of the stench of sewage that has long plagued the area.

Recently we made a public request from the PUB on where they nhad used the chemicals to mitigate the smell of sewage from the lift stations across the city and guess what? The majority of the lift stations and treatment plants they have treated with the stench-fighting chemicals were overwhelmingly north of Boca Chica Boulevard. In other words, the rest of the residents of the barrios of the city will just have to put up with it.
This moving of the park to a site with the distinctively wretched smell is not going well with Southmost residents or the families of the baseball players.
Already, we have gotten wind (forgive the pun) that there is a move underway to derail the plan to sell Lincoln Park, including, possibly, a move to call for a public referendum on the issue culminating in a recall for those city commissioners who sign on to the sale of the park.
Baseball families, barrio activists and other city residents are outraged that all these city assets have been promised to the University of Texas System without consulting the populace.
That some city commissioners who are supposed to represent the population have not uttered a peep speaks to the fact that they have been browbeaten by the United Brownsville trioka of Mayor Tony Martinez and commissioners Ros Gowen and Deborah Portillo. The rest of the sheep on the city commission have made nary a bleat about the plan.
When the city and state needed land to make the expressway extension, what did it do? It move the barrio park from the island on the resaca to the present site. Now that the University of Texas wants the property for some future expansion what do they do? They want to sell it and move the people's park again, this time to a location deemed undesirable by the UT System bigwigs because it stinks of...well, shit.
Our favorite poet-in-residence (Eugene "Gene" Novogrodsky) has sent us a free-verse poem which pretty much mirrors the sentiments of locla political observers. Thanks, Gene, but we have a feeling that this isn't over by a long shot.

Paper clips we are, mere paper clips in the Brownsville City Commission's and University Of Texas-Brownsville's hands.

Shove us about, and no better example exists than the pending move of Lincoln Park for a UTB building dream and twisted money manipulations.




Get ready, we thousands who use the park, for another move.

Fortunately, the first made sense - who wants to picnic under an expressway.


But this move, to acres near a stinky water-treatment plant is terrible.


Elitist, arrogant and know-it-all and know-what's-best mark the park movers' attitude towards regular people.


No better than paper clips on the table, off we go and are gone, until the next election comes and the candidates want votes.