A LA CHISQUIADA GOWEN LE PATINA OVER BICYCLES

8. Consideration and ACTION to adopt the Bicycling Capital of the Rio Grande Valley Logo.
(Arturo Rodriguez -Health)
9. Consideration and ACTION on Resolution Number 2015-087, encouraging the Texas
Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to support the use of shoulders of the State Roads as safe places to ride bicycles. (Constanza Miner- Interim Planning Director)

By Juan Montoya
Ever since she got on the City of Brownsville City Commission, Dr. Rose Gowen-Zavaletta has been the driving force behind a wide range of gambits in an effort to force local residents to use bicycles for their own good.
She has hosted many forums and has used her position as a bully pulpit to drive home her message.
But that isn't all. In her effort to instill good dietary and exercise habits upon the unsuspecting population, he has turned to the lowly bicycle as the one instrument of health and fitness.
In her zeal to imprint her health-for-all philosophy (she is, after all, affiliated with the UT Health School System), she has championed the use of bicycles over other, more immediate needs and causes.
The city lacks sidewalks and you often see the people walking on the road to avoid the overgrown weeds and grass on the earthen shoulder where sidewalks normally go.
The same goes for bus stops. A bus stop in Brownsville is a metal sign with the bus logo on it and no shelter or seats for the people to use. If they're lucky there will be a nearby mesquite which will provide some shade from the blazing summer sun or winter gales.
Once or twice a month, her impetus for the chisquida way of life forces the closure of downtown streets to traffic so that residents from the fringes of town can ride their $200 to $300 bicycles up and down the deserted streets.
Bicycles downtown are normally used in very utilitarian ways by the people. Usually, it's the guys looking for aluminum cans in the dumpsters of downtown alleys. Sometimes it's the guys with the plastic pails who wash cars. Other times it's old men picking up cardboard from the rear of stores to recycle and get a few dollars from their sale. And there's not a chubby none in the bunch. They're all slim and trim.
Except for a few students coming and going through town to TSC or UTB, most people are afraid to ride a bike in downtown Brownsville's murderous traffic.
Ditto for the outside roads controlled by the state. Now, you really have to take your life into your hands to ride on FM 802 or Alton Gloor. That's during the day. At night, it is sheer folly and suicidal. But we're going to ask the state to support the sue of shoulders on state roads as safe places to ride bicycles. So the mere edict will make bike riders safe? Sure it will.
Still, by her sheer persistence (intransigence?), Gowen has managed to funnel city monies to her pet projects and damn the rest. City lots are overgrown, Trash covers the streets. Potholes lie in wait for the unwary after a heavy rain that simply undoes the patch work that was performed by Public Works crews the after rain before.
That is the essence of job security in that department. You simply will not run out of work patching potholes in Brownsville.
Thank goodness that Gowen also took it upon herself to make sure that if you were attending a sports event at the Brownsville Sports Center, you would jot be tempted to eat a grease-laden hot dog or other unhealthy snacks from the concession stands by prohibiting their sale there.  Foegt eth gorditas or pork carnitas, tia. I'll have some raw broccoli and bean sprouts with my soy smoothie, please! 
In Tuesday's meeting, the new city logo honoring Brownsville as the Bicycling Capital of the RGV will be adopted. It was designed by a UT Austin student from Brownsville named Higino Turrubiates Jr., a UT-Austin graduate who is an architectural intern at LMN Architects, in Seattle, Washington.
We can almost guess that he will not be paid a $90,000 prize for the logo he designed, as was paid Ronnie Oliveira with Hahn Communications for his.
But then again, Turrubiates is nor as politically well connected with State Rep. Rene Oliveira, as Ronnie is being the rep's cousin.
Turrubiate's design was picked by a city committee for free. Why wasn't the COB logo done the same was so we could have saved us a ton of money? Hahn has released a budget for the rest of their "rebranding" campaign that will (with the addition of the $140,000 already paid them) make it a cool $1 million for their troubles. Problem is, the people don't like it.
Well, that's never stopped the city administration or the commission before. As long as La Chisquida Gowen is at the city's handlebars, hold on for the ride and to your wallet.