THE MIKE HERNANDEZ III-MARIN-OP 10.33 ED. INITIATIVE

By Juan Montoya
After a shaky start on his messianic plan to uplift the masses in Brownsville from the abject poverty that has made the city known as the poorest city in the United States, Mike Hernandez III and his Op 10.33 group has continued to advocate the establishment of a high-tech vocational school to prepare the local workforce.
Hernandez and his cadre of his OP 10.33 associates have tried to make inroads toward taking over some of the key boards affecting commerce and employment, notably the attempt to take over the Brownsville navigation District and the board of the Texas Southmost College. Their attempt to install former TSC trustee Ed Rivera and local banker Raul Villnueva failed miserably, with their candidates losing in at least six key elections.
Nonetheless, the spin machine with OP 10.33 tried to put on the best face saying that they had been influential in some of the victories in some of the races toward which they had made financial contributions. Unfortunately, that claim was challenged by the supporters of at least one county commissioner who appropriately pointed out that Pct. 2 commissioner Alex Dominguez had won his race two years before OP 10.33 made a splash locally with its billboards and public relations blitz.
We won't say we have the precise count, but we know from some financial candidate reports that Hernandez and his cohorts – Ambiotec and United Brownsville architect Carlos Marin, State Rep. Eddi Lucio III, his V3 wing of community organizations headed by Raza Unida founder Jose Angel Gutierrez, PR maven Roger Lee, and education director Carly Strength, among others – are still in the thick of the fight to make Hernandez's dream of economic nirvana a reality.
Toward that end Hernandez has stated that he will give Tony Martinez's pet project, Guadalupe Middle School, $1 million. He also said he would give United Brownsville another $2 million to help them along and wean them from the public teat that they had created by charging $25,000 apiece to eight publicly-funded entities for "memberships" that will give them a "seat at the table."
According to the organization's website,  United Brownsville (UB) was established in 2010 with the mission to be a catalyst for collaborative action on the vision developed by the Brownsville community in the Imagine Brownsville Comprehensive Plan.
That plan was put together by Marin's Ambiotec firm which netted him a cool $1 million. Originally, the Imagine Brownsville comprehensive plan was put together under the administration of former mayor Eddie Treviño to seek a federal grant that did not materialize. But rather than cutting its losses, the UBCC morphed it into what we now call United Brownsville which comes out every budget year with hat in hand after the public's bucks.
The eight entities have pitched in $25,000 each for the last six years. Ideally, that means that UB's director, former Kyle, Texas mayor Mike Gonzalez had collected that much each of the last six years. Some of these entities have started questioning what has been done with the money other than pay the executive director and his secretary and the Port of Brownsville, and now TSC, are reconsidering handing out the public's cash toward the group that has yet to show how many jobs the money – more than $1.2 million and climbing – has provided local residents.
Already, the pitch has worn thin for some of these entities to hand out the public's money to a group that waqs headed by the likes of former IBC president Fred Rusteberg, UTB's Julieta Garcia, and UTB VP Irv Downing. Rusteberg has since stepped aside to let Irving take the United Brownsville Coordinating Committee with the assistance of city commissioner Deborah Portillo, formerly Gonzalez's secretary at UB, and ZIWA Corp. president Jorge de la Garza. ZIWA, a new player in Brownsville power circles, has landed multi-million contract with public entities, notably the Brownsville Independent School District and with the city.
Despite the political setbacks, OP 10.33 still remains committed to the establishment of a high-tech vocational workforce center. But as is often the case with OP 10.33's grand strategy, the plans look good on paper but shrivel under the glare of public scrutiny.
Take, for example, the Cameron County Educational Initiative with offices in Arlington, Texas. The CCRI was formed in January 2016 and includes among its directors Hernandez, Marin and one Carly Strength, who is hailed as an expert in vocational training. Marin is also the director of job development under the OP 10.33 umbrella.
Strength at this time is riding shotgun over the bankruptcy of his chain of vocation-technical schools which have come under scrutiny by the federal and state government after various complaints from students and its debtors who claim they were shortchanged by the tactics used by the schools under Strength.
Lawyers for the schools have argued that Strength has approved exorbitant legal fees for his lawyers from the coffers of the bankrupt corporations.
http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2016/07/op-1033s-ed-director-charged-with.html
So far, attempts by Marin and Hernandez to steer the construction of the proposed school to their selection of real estate along the 550 Corridor failed. The state, instead, chose another site along U.S. 77-83 (I 69).
But if experience if any indication of their determination, we would be willing to bet that the idea will reappear in another reincarnation in the fertile mind of Marin, et al. Having salvaged his $1 million Imagine Brownsville dud from the jaws of defeat and then turned it into a moneymaker, Marin and his pals – as the poet says – are filled with passionate intensity.