HAIL, HAIL, THE BROWNSVILLE PUBLIC WORKS GANG IS HERE!

By Juan Montoya
After months of doing without a director, the Cameron County Public Works Department has a new one.

It's Carlos Reyes, a former City of Brownsville supervisor who takes over the in Cameron County and replace the late PW director Ruben Gonzalez who passed away last November.

Reyes started his new position March 12 and will earn a $70,000 salary and will have a six-month probation period.

Reyes, who listed a high school diploma in the space for education on his employment application, comes after spending 26 years in the city as construction inspector supervisor with the City of Brownsville.

Before that, he had worked in a number of positions involving surveying and supervision dating back to 1981 when he stated with the city as a teen working with the Summer Youth Program.

He lists among his qualifications his professional membership in something called the American Public Works Association and numerous other certificates of attendance in road construction and surveying seminars. It also lists his certificate of appreciation from the city for his "tireless assistance in the city's awards banquet" and for being an "additional safety duty officer (?)."

He also lists "the defusing of irate citizens" as one of his "areas of expertise."

He listed three city employees as his references: Carlos Lastra and Teodoro Garcia, both engineers, and Kirk Massey, a police officer.

Apparently, this impressed County Administrator David Garcia to no end, because he chose him from among the other applicants, some of them with more education and formal job experience.

In his new job, he joins other recycled city employees the likes of supervisor Santana Vallejo, the employee who somehow managed to dodge several Cameron County Sheriff's Department investigations of theft involving the sale of concrete driveway pipes to rural residents. His attorneys scared those who were sold the pipes by saying they were just as guilty as Vallejo and they refused to testify.

Vallejo left the city after a near scrape when city workers were discovered using materials from the sidewalk building project to do jobs on the side building driveways on private property.

Well, the gang's back together again, it appears, but this time to "serve" Cameron COunty.

In the photo above, Reyes seems like a fun guy getting his face plastered with his birthday cake, just as Vallejo has posted pictures of his frolicking below that.

County Public Works employees, get ready for the ride?