LOCAL CITY GOVERNMENT AT FULL NANNY MODE

By Juan Montoya
One city commissioner said that she loved her dog so much and wanted the public to become responsible pet owners so she pushed for the ordinance going into effect January 2017 that requires all pets to have a microchip implanted in their skin to make it easier to find its owner.

For a slight fee, or through the use of their private veterinarian, she is hoping all dogs in the city will be microchipped. If an animal control officer picks up a dog without one, it runs the risk of euthanasia if no one adopts it.
Commissioner Deborah Portillo said she was hoping that the Brownsville Animal Shelter would adopt a no-kill zone policy. But the ordinance, in effect, spells a death sentence for any animal caught without the chip.

Another commissioner – Rose Gowen – wants you to adopt a healthy lifestyle and is using millions of city and grant dollars to make you ride a bike or stroll through the city and lose some of that longa.
Both have championed the United Brownsville boondoggle while on the city commission and Portillo – who started off as the group's secretary – is now its president after the executive director was fired. Gowen also sits on the UB board.

This was the same commissioner who wanted to ban hot dogs and hamburgers at the Brownsville Sports Center and soft drinks and candy from vending machines in city facilities.
That comes on top of the recently challenged plastic-bag ban passed during the Pat Ahumada administration when he looked askew at the proliferation of bags adorning our mesquite trees and ditches.

If only a certain 10 percent of shoppers littered by throwing their plastic bags anywhere else but the trash receptacle, the other 90 percent has to put up with the inconvenience of hauling grocery bags around in their car trunks or pay $1 to buy plastic bags from the stores.

The State of Texas has warned the city it could end up in court for charging fees justified as waste removal without authority. Legal Eagle (and ethically-challenged) city attorney Mark Sossi is our David in the battle with Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General. Don't pin your hopes on this one, guys. I got $5 on Kenny.

It seems that these pet projects advocated by these elected officials have to be funded by the rest of the public so they can get a nice warm feeling that they are looking after our best interests. Of course, if they had to use their own money they probably wouldn't be quite as adamant of doing all these great things for us.

And then there's the support by these two ladies for the parasite organization United Brownsville. That organization – which is accountable to no one – was formed to be funded by public tax dollars at a rate of $25,000 each. Its leaders were IBC President Fred Rusteberg and former UTB-TSC "partnership" president Julieta Garcia. For good measure, they threw in banker and former city planner Irv Downing.

For more than six years, the UB parasitic organization has been leeching off the public teat to the tune of more than $200,000 a year. Late this year, with diminishing returns and a general realization that not one job had been generated, and that its self-appointed mission to "lessen the burden of government" on city and other elected officials and provide "a forum" for public projects was getting stale, it fired its $80,000 executive director.

That was Mike Gonzalez, the former Tea Party mayor of Kyle, Texas. He is now gone, but in reality he was never really here. Not only did he remain registered to vote there, but he also kept his homestead in that city. He just hung out here making speeches and collecting his check.

Ask Rusteberg or Garcia why they formed the United Brownsville Coordinating Board and you'll probably get the paternalistic answer that they were doing all these things for us because they know better than we what we need to make our lives happier.
Perhaps the most paternalistic of them all is none other than Da Mayor Tony Martinez.

He has been able to pass off as  devout Catholic who has the ear of God through his connections in the church hierarchy. He even has a private chapel in his back yard for those moments of solitude and mediation where he can think of yet another venture into real estate speculation as he did in the infamous Casa Del Nylon purchase from his buddy Abraham Galonsky.

The inflated $2.3 million price tag it carried was made possible by the issuance of $12 million in Certificates of Obligation that do not require a public vote. He merely got the other pliant members of the city commission to go along with the plan. It came to him in a vision, we would imagine.

Do we need to mention the Tenaska debacle? Ever since 2013 the rate payers of the Public Utility Board have been saddled with increases in electricity, water and waste water bills to pay off for the $325 million it will cost to build the $500 million plant and get 25 percent of the electricity produced.

That is, if the plan ever get built because there is a glut of electricity on the grid and at least two gas-fired electric plants are coming on line in Edinburg and Harlingen. Tenaska said it has the option of building (or not building) the plant when and if they have customers for the other 75 percent of the electricity generated.

Meanwhile, the rate payers keep on paying higher bills that will never go down despite the plant not being built.
Each year, the PUB milk cow "transfers" about $8 million from these rates to balance the city budget deficit. In lean times, city manager Charlie Cabler has not hesitated to go hit up the PUB and strong-arm the board as he used to do to perps when he was a cop to fok over another "prestamito" to tide the city over.

So now all pets have to have a microchip, stores won't give you plastic grocery bags, the PUB bills keep increasing with no plant in site, there are more bike trails than sidewalk space, and the overburdened taxpayers continue to pay off the UB parasites so they can "lessen the burden" on elected officials who don't think twice about dipping into the public treasury to satisfy their personal whims.