GARCIA JR. RELENTLESS IN THE PURSUIT OF GBIC'S $407,000

By Juan Montoya
He is, if anything, dogged sand persistent.
Recently, Oscar Jr.'s plan to get $407,000 for Phase II of a Small Areas Plan from the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation (GBIC) was tabled by the full board of the Brownsville Economic Development Council citing a lack of the need, a lack of urgency, and the sheer folly of throwing nearly $500,000 of good money after bad into a second study to study a study.
Not one to be easily deterred, Garcia leaned upon Asst. City Manager Michael Warrick to schedule a workshop consisting of him and United Brownsville Michael Gonzales seeking to impress upon the city commissioners the critical nature of giving Garcia's Jacobs Management Group the additional $407,000 for Phase II of the study of the study.
He never told them that the BEDC board had turned him down on his request and that the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation (GBIC) had not even bothered to put it on their agenda for consideration. It is, in the view of many, a dead horse.
This was not the first time that Oscar Jr, had gone to the GBIC well.
In February, as Project manager for Jacobs, he convinced the Port of Brownsville, the Public Utilities Board and the GBIC to hand over $185,000 for Phase 1 of the so-called Small Area Plan recommended by the $454,000 Brownsville Strategic Infrastructure and Land Management Plan drafted by Robin McCaffrey of Needham, McCaffrey and Associates, the same firm that 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.
Garcia Jr. was the chairman of the Brownsville Public Utility Board when he signed off on the McCaffrey plan.
That plan identified 32 small-area sites and called for the development of commercial corridors and recommended that the development of the plan be split into three phases at a total cost of $750,000.
Garcia Jr. saw his opportunities and took them and, like a Tammany Hall operative, jumped ship at the PUB and latched on to Jacobs to milk the cow.
His proposal to the port, the PUB, and the GBIC for Phase I landed him $185,000 voted on by GBIC chairman David Betancourt, city commissioner Jessica Tetreau, and Al Villarreal.
We looked long and hand for the work product that Oscar Jr. had developed and no one could find it for a few days. When we finally got it, we understood why it had taken so long.
At first blush, the 90-page report seeks to dazzle the reader. But as you become jaded to Brownsville being "poised," "positioned," ready to launch, etc., to maximize its potential, to allow it to expand economic growth, to etc., etc., etc.,
You know the mantra.
At its core is an embellishment of the McCaffrey plan, with small parts of it polished up, repackaged, wrapped in tinsel, and thrust at the reader as new. In fact, it is nothing more than la misma gata, pero revolcada.
That is just the first 50 pages.
As you leaf through it several projects listed in the McCaffrey study keep reappearing in the text. They are: The deepening of the Port's channel (Port-centric), the extension of the Brownville airport runway, the Coming of Spacex (of course), the Brownville Industrial Corridor, the Tenaska plant

(power corridors), the coming of UTRGV, the East Loop, FM 550, and, of course, those tantalizing commercial clusters. There is the perfunctory bone thrown to Marin's Bi-Ned scheme to make the "metroplex" of Matamoros and Brownsville the "hub" of secondary manufacturing to service the maquiladoras in Matamoros.
They are adorned with individual flow charts showing how it will all come together and take us

into economic nirvana if you just follow the plan.
The last 40 pages consist of (we're not joking) of the index cards that were used to "prioritize" these projects. Why the index cards were included we can only hazard to guess.
He was paid to find funding for all this and he relies heavily on the original master plan. There's talk of  creating "special" district (read taxes), the enhanced ad valorem taxes that will naturally follow on infrastructure improvements, and other gimmicks so that they will "remove the burden from local taxpayers."
He probably figured that 50 pages for $185,000 may have seemed to scant a work product for the funding "stakeholders." That would be about $3,700 per page. So he added some padding consisting of 40 pages of photocopied note index cards with hand-drawn arrows and notes. That's 50 pages of index cards for which you, the public, paid $92,500. We include some for your enjoyment.
The Port and the PUB, wisely, have declined to participate in lining Oscar Jr.'s pockets with yet another study, jo matter what Phase it may be. The GBIC is now the only public funding deep pocket left in sight.
If we know Garcia Jr., he won't stop trying to milk the GBIC for the $407,000 and will try to enlist the aid of the city commission to lean on GBIC chairman David Betancourt to put him on its agenda. We hope Betancourt won't cave in even though if he wants to make a run at county judge he'll need the deep pockets of someone like Jacobs Management, if not its project manager Garcia Jr.
We'll keep our ears to the ground and keep you updated. If you want to see the rest of the 45 index cards.
If you want us to show you the other 45 pages of photocopied index cards, let us know. After all, you paid for it.