DA MAYOR RUNS SCARED, DAY CARE CENTERS AND PACHANGAS

By Juan Montoya
We can just imagine what the high-priced Austin PR firm Message, Audience and Presentation (MAP) consultants probably told Mayor Tony Martinez.
"Your numbers are dropping, mayor. Better get out on the hustings and politic in the old-fashion style and hustle some ass."
And so we have Martinez – who has shown a marked distaste for rubbing elbows with the unwashed masses – addressing adult day-care audiences accompanied by politiquero Desi Serrata, Tony at a sparse gathering at Los Camperos Sunday, and the continued bombardment to those on the voting lists with of slick mass mail outs where he claims credit for the national economic upturn.
In his latest mail out, Martinez claims credit for the upgrade of city bonds, the unemployment rate, and the coming of SpaceX and the decision by the UT Regents to establish the UTRGV in the Rio Grande Valley.
The front of the mailer shows two men working on a dock and a headline about  getting Brownsville "Back to work!"
There's only one slight problem. The men are both longshoremen at the Port of Brownsville, not City of Brownsville workers. Is Martinez claiming credit for the jobs at the port?
Did he also invent the Internet?
Candidates had been warned not to use the SpaceX logo for their campaigns, but mentioning that Space X "has broken ground," the University of Texas RGV is investing millions..., etc.," apparently is within bounds for his reelection bid.
Nowhere does Martinez say that the State of Texas and the Brownsville Economic Development Council offered $15 million in public tax money as incentives for them to come here. And nowhere does he mention that he offered the UT System some 80 acres of city-owned prime real-estate at bargain-basement prices to entice them to stay.
And his offering of 48-acre Lincoln Park is nowhere mentioned in the missive.
It is a stand that Martinez – probably at the suggestion of the MAP consultants – is now shying away from as from an embarrassing relative.
Gullible Herald reporter Ty Johnson said in his report on the mayoral candidates that:
"Martinez and other commissioners have received much vitriol over the Lincoln Park deal, which is why his public reversal on the transaction a day before polls opened has changed the climate of the election.
Martinez sponsored a resolution asking the city to consider other land options during the April 21 regular meeting of the Brownsville City Commission.
Critics suggested the candidate was making a soft appeasement to the electorate with the resolution, which they called hollow since it did not bar the city from selling Lincoln Park."
Actually, no.
Suggested one of our readers: The resolution was the same. The resolution didn't ask to consider other sites, just to consider giving them more, JUST LIKE THE FIRST ONE. Martinez DID NOT "public reversal", only in the mind of Johnson. "You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can fool Ty Johnson EVERY TIME!"
The recipients of the mass mail out where Martinez claims that he is somehow responsible for the upgrade of the local economy doesn't say how many jobs have been created by the United Brownsville cronies who have been the recipients of millions for study after study handed out to the likes of former Kyle mayor (and now UB director) Mike Gonzalez's media consultants and Julieta Garcia's son Oscar Garcia, now wearing the hat of Jacob Engineering representative.
A tidy $454,492 went to Robin McCaffrey of Needham, McCaffrey and Associates is the same Robin McCaffrey who worked on the City of Kyle Comprehensive Master Plan, under the name of Mesa. McCaffrey was hired when Mayor Mike/Miguel Gonzalez was still in office in Kyle. Gonzalez is now the executive director of United Brownsville, a rather tidy arrangement.
As an member of the United Brownsville board, Martinez oversaw the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation, the Port of Brownsville and the Brownsville Public Utilities Board pay nearly a half million dollars($454,592.08) for a plan for the  22,000 acre industrial corridor, including the Port of Brownsville.
Jacob's Engineering (Oscar Jr's new outfit) got the $185,000 contract to identify funding to implement a part of part of that plan. We understand that Garcia is going back  for a bigger share of the $600,000 set aside for further "studies."
Garcia Jr., the son of United Brownsville's Coordinating Board member Juliet Garcia. Garcia Jr. used to be the operations manager for Su Clinic Familiar, a facility run by Carlos Marin Marin's wife, a doctor.
Well, that's at least two jobs that Martinez can take credit for, we guess.
And while Martinez's mail out claims in one section that he is responsible for the unemployment rate from 11.1 percent in December 2011 to 7.7 percent in December 2014, the graphic next to it states it went down to 7.2 percent. So which one is it?
But there's more. Martinez hints (and preempts a BEDC announcement?) in his mail out that "we just learned an Italian company is bringing 300 new high-end jobs with a median salary of $40,000 year."
That reminds us of the BEDC's VP Gilbert Salinas and CEO Jason Hilts when they claimed that SpaceX would bring 600 jobs paying $50,000. In the end, it turns out that SpaceX told the FAA in their Environmental Impact Statement that in 10 years it might hire a total of 150 to 200 employees, some part time.
Martinez also doesn;t mention that as a result of his Lone-Ranger approach to Big Deals, he encumbered the ratepayers of the PUB with a $325 million debt that resulted in a 36 percent increase in electric rates.
In fact, since he has been mayor, electric rates will have increased by 41 percent, water rates by 25 percent, and waste water by 11 percent. This resulting, according to the PUB's bond rating services, of a downgrade of the utility's bonds to "negative" citing "ratepayer fatigue."
We are not geniuses here, but that sure doesn't seem to be much of a legacy we can believe in.
His Sunday ad in the local newspaper focuses on two students and says that education is his "passion." That, he says, is the reason he "fought so hard" to keep the UTRGV here.
This is the first time we heard that he was running for the Brownsville Independent School District or the board of the Texas Southmost College. But if his record at the city is any measure of his performance, we hope that voters in this election give him a flunking grade.
On the list below are the candidates for mayor. The Anyone But Tony movement is growing. Choose one other than Martinez.

MAYOR

1. Tony Martinez

2. Pat Ahumada

3. Brenda Joyas

4. Erasmo Castro

5. Robert “Bob” Sanchez
6. William A. Garza.