OUR CHOICES, AND DECLARATION AGAINST TWO INCUMBENTS

Special to El Rrun-Rrun
(With Apologies to the Founding Fathers)

The unanimous Declaration of the voters in the 2017 Brownsville City Election

When in the course of local political events it becomes necessary for an electorate to dissolve the support which installed the mayor and the incumbents on the Brownsville City Commission, a decent respect to public opinion requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truth to be self-evident, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive and self-serving it is the right of the people to alter or to oust it, and to institute a new city government.

When a long train of abuses and usurpations, it is their duty to vote out such government, and to provide new leadership. The history of Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez and incumbents Rose Gowen and John Villarreal has been a history of a repeated voting record  based on self interest and a pandering to interests other than the public good. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

Martinez – with Gowen and Villarreal's support – have refused his assent to formulation of a code of laws, a city Code of Ethics, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. The promises of Martinez, six years ago, to formulate such a code was only lip service to which both Gowen and Villarreal have assented.

They have forbidden the city administrators to enforce laws of immediate and pressing importance, like suspending the enforcing of the the conflict of interest clauses in the city's personnel policy which would have prevented Fire Department Chief Carlos Elizondo from serving in an elected office at the Brownsville Independent School District until his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, they have utterly neglected to attend to them.

They have refused to consult with the people on matters of great interest and which tax them immeasurably such as their personal advocacy for the construction of a $500 million gas-fired electric generating plant which resulted in a 36 percent increase from 2013 to 2016, water rates to increase 20 percent increase from 2013 to 2016, and waste water services by  6 percent over over the first two years and will stay there indefinitely.

They have unilaterally erected a multitude of new offices at public expense for the gentrification of their downtown centres and sent hither swarms of parking meter officers to harass the common people and used the people's assets to feed their illusions of grandeur through the use of City Manager Charlie Cabler's $35,000 discretionary spending cap.

Martinez has combined with Gowen and Villarreal  to subject us to a subsidization of the oil-and-gas wealthy UT System, giving their assent to their acts of pretended legislation which would have despoiled the poorest community in the nation of their property and assets to give to the UT System. Da Mayor has conspired with others, such as Villarreal and Gowen, to attempt to give Lincoln Park away to the UT System and place the people's park across the street from a sewage plant where the odors, most vile, emanate.

We hold Martinez, Gowen and Villarreal responsible for imposing taxes on us without our consent such as the millions of dollars in Certificates of Obligations with which he has purchased properties of his friends and cronies that has resulted in their acquiring wealth and the city suffers in the removal of properties from the tax rolls, thereby increasing the burden on the average taxpayer. They have used this as a subterfuge to keep from asking the people who will pay these instruments of debt or for their opinions and consent.

We hold Gowen and Villarreal responsible for ignoring the city charter, and allowing Martinez to discuss and vote on his purchase of tax-delinquent properties in violation of the Texas Local Government Code, thereby increasing the value of his lands and enriching him through this illegal stratagem.

They have plundered our assets, ravaged our municipal budgets, impoverished our town, and destroyed the commerce of the merchants downtown by continuing to have them pay for the Cyclobias much favored by La Chizquida Gowen to push for the use of bicycles as her answer to bring health, wealth and prosperity to all instead of creating jobs, improving our drainage or providing the most basic services such as fixing our streets and building sidewalks for our people to walk on. Instead, Gowen has steered millions toward the construction of bike and hike trails for the recreation of the landed few. So far, these cyclobia events have cost the city taxpayers $543,898.70


He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the continued depredation of his ethics-challenged legal henchman Mark Sossi whose known rules of litigation are an undistinguished destruction of morals, values and right that affects all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince and his henchmen Gowen and Villarreal, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, are unfit to be the rulers of a free people. The promises of Martinez, Gowen and Villarreal to remove the gag on the public on the public comment period during their meetings have been ignored.


Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our brethren in the Texas Legislature. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our existence and  conditions here.

We have appealed to the native justice and magnanimity of the Texas Attorney General and the Texas Commission on Ethics and our pleas have fallen on the deaf ears of Texas Sen. Eddie Lucio, Tex Reps Rene Oliveira and Eddie Lucio III and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

 They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the Martinez, Gowen and Villarreal, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the voters of the City of Brownsville, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of Browntown, solemnly publish and declare, that these united barrios and electoral districts that all political connection between them and the city commission, is and ought to be totally dissolved.