SELLING PORRA NUMBERS NOTHING VIS-A-VIS DA MAYOR'S SINS

ORIGINAL LETTER IN NOV. 7 CITY COMMISSIONER PACKET

SANITIZED LETTER IN PACKET FOR NOV. 7 MEETING WITHOUT MENTIONING MAYOR NOW ONLINE

By Juan Montoya

Compared to selling office football pool numbers, the transgressions of Da Mayor Tony Martinez's interference in the procurement process would merit not only termination, but a possible indictment as well.

Two city building inspector employees were terminated Thursday and led out of the City Plaza by security guards for selling numbers to the porra. And what did Martinez do?

We never expected to find this when we made an info request from the City Of Brownsville Secretary for the amount the city had paid Origo Works, an architectural firm belonging to Javier Huerta who has done work for Mayor Tony Martinez at his Spanky's Burgers and El Rincon de la Paz, located at the same address as his law office.

The response to our request was that the city had not made any payments to Huerta's Origo Works.

The top letter was included in the original back-up packet sent to commissioners for their consideration and approval for a change order from CH2MHILL of Englewood, Co. that would increase their fees from $1,650,000 to $2,500,925, a $850,925 increase.

The new additions to the passenger terminal area were added by the city and its local architect, Origo Works, increasing the original size from 65,000 square feet to 85,000 square feet. Also, the Custom and Border Protection asked that the original 14,000 square feet be increased by 9,000 square feet for Federal Inspection Service (FIS) areas to 23,000 square feet.

Those changes, said James Kirshbaum, the engineer for CH2MHILL, were not in the original engineering specs provided to the company when it submitted its response to the city's Request for Proposals (RFP). As a result, he said, not only the cost of the engineering services, but the changes in the original design will balloon the original construction cost estimate from $27.5 million to $38 million.

In the original letter, the Kirshbaum stated that the changes in engineering/design cost, a five-month delay, and the and overall construction cost were due to changes after the RFP were approved.

"The other item that has caused additional design and management effort is the coordination with our local architect, Origo Works," wrote Kirshbaum, the engineer for CH2MHILL.
"As requested by the mayor, we engaged Origo Works to help incorporate 'local' architectural features and elements into the original design. This effort extended the conceptual design phase of the project by approximately five months, resulting in significant additional efforts by CH2M, Corgan and Origo Works."

That entire paragraph has been removed by the later insertion of the second letter which deletes any mention of the mayor or Origo Works. Both letters are dated Sept. 21 and signed by  Kirshbaum Sept, 6.

However, in the commissioners' agenda backup, CH2MHILL lists payments made, not to Origo Works, but to Jaime Huerta, its owner, of $25,000 under Current Terminal Contract, $15,000 under Revised Terminal Contract, and another $5 for Terminal 55 Contract for a total of $45,000.

Jaime Huerta is said to have been a classmate of the mayor's son at St. Joseph Academy and his company lists as his finished projects the mayor's restaurant Spanky's Burgers and his Rincon de la Paz foundation located at his law office address at 1206 E. Van Buren Street.

So why was the reference in the fourth paragraph of the original letter to the Mayor and Origo Worksremoved from the sanitized version inserted in the other letter? Who changed it and who ordered them to change it?

And isn't tampering with a government document a crime?

Despite all these questions, no one raised the issue in the following meeting when the minutes of the Nov. 7 meeting included the sanitized version of Kirshbaum's letter to Walker erasing the mayor's role in increasing the cost of the airport terminal from $27 to $38 million and handing over $45,000 to his personal architect were omitted..

Selling numbers in an office football pool seems like jaywalking compared to Martinez's plunder of the city taxpayers.