BROWNSVILLE, TSC, BECAUSE OF ERRORS, IN CATCH-UP MODE

By Juan Montoya
It used to be an urban myth (or was it?) that Brownsville lost Pan American Airways because the airport board of directors way back when refused to elongate (and extend?) the runways because they were leasing the land to some of their friends who were cotton farmers.

While that may or not be true, the fact is that when it comes to economic development and technical and vocational training, past moves by former boards and city officials have placed the city in a catch-up mode with neighboring entities by their own doing.

Take for example, the recent disengagement between the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation (GBIC)  and the Brownsville Economic Development Council (BEDC).

After years of contracting its economic development monies to the BEDC and getting scant returns, the new board of the GBIC decided to take matters into its own hands, hire its own director to replace Jason Hilts, and direct the efforts to maximize its eco-dev dollars.

To begin with, the Hilts' selection as director was suspect to begin with. Hilts had a scant economic development track record back in Michigan, but politics being what they are, he was able to get enough of his compadres to vote for him to get the gig. Even after he was caught abusing the BEDC's credit card to purchase items of luxury for his personal use (like a grandfather clock, for example), he was promoted to executive director and given a raise!

The GBIC board terminated the contract with the BEDC after Hilts'e excesses and his board's became too embarrassing to accept. Annual trips to Paris to attend the Paris Air Show, the jaunts of the directors and selected city officials (Mayor Tony Martinez, for example) to the Netherlands and Turkey with nothing to show was bit much for the new guys on the board to swallow. There was even a running joke that local officials who took the jaunt to the east came back "made" in China.

Throw in the continuing scandal involving BEDC CEO Hilts and his opening of a satellite office in Colombia which was run by a woman linked romantically to the administrator with their trips to Brazil and other South American capitals for no discernible reason, and the situation finally reached the tipping point.

After years of keeping that office and hiring Colombian nationals to run it, the BEDC had yet to show that it had created one job for a Brownsville resident. Now, after GBIC cut of the three-year, $5.1 million contract to the BEDC, they are nearing the selection and hiring of an executive director. They spent a pretty penny to pay a nationally renown head hunter outfit to find the right person.

Meanwhile, the Price-Waterhouse-Cooper audit they ordered to find out where the GBIC money paid to BEDC went is just about ready and if push comes to shove, lawsuits may be in the offing against the BEDC board or its past adminbistors.

And the economic development that was supposed to be generated by the BEDC all these years? Well, it's not necessary to enumerate the failures under its belt. Let's just say that the GBIC is starting from scratch to generate development with it's annual $5 million share of city sales tax receipts. Meanwhile, cities like McAllen, Edinburg, even Harlingen, have been at it for the past two or three decades.

So over the past decade or two, while other cities combed the world for companies to resettle in their areas to provide jobs for their residents, the City of Brownsville – through succeeding contracts with the BEDC – squandered millions paying for a good time for its directors and invited guests to party on the taxpayers' nickle. Never mind the money squandered, it is the time lost that cannot be recovered.

Ditto for Texas Southmost College.

For two decades after the introduction of a hybrid university-community college creation called a "partnership" by the sycophants of former UTB-TSC president Julieta Garcia and her pliant boards, the original mission of the community college was being lost.

Garcia preferred to think of the "partnership" as a "community university" and set about to push the vocational-technical aspect of the college to the rear of the bus. Tuition was raised to university levels, and the various programs that had provided a leg up to students seeking certification in the trades was given short shrift. Workforce training was given lip service and basically shunned by the reigning academics.

With a graduation rate of 17 percent over six years, less than a 50 percent retaining rate of its students, and student tuition and fees on parity with universities, it was a dismal failure. By the time that a new board took over and separated from the UT System, the college found that one of its most successful programs, the ass. nursing program, was pulled by the state for the dismal level of performance of its students in state tests. Numerous students who had planned for that career were stymied and lost that opportunity.

Now, as the new board which acquired operational independence from the UT System sets about to return TSC to its mission, it finds that other entities dedicated to voc-tech training are running way ahead of it. Like the city is in the arena of eco-dev, TSC is running catch-up with the likes of TSTC and other technical colleges up the valley.

After all, a conservative estimate of the annual "transfers" averaging more than $50 million a year from TSC to UTB over the last 20 years come to nearly $1 Billion (with a B) of subsidies from the poorest community in the United States to the wealthiest oil-and-gas funded institutions of higher education in the world. Those resources, of course, can be recovered. But what about the time lost chasing this ivory tower concocted by the would-be builders of the Harvard by the Rio Grande?

It is going to take a hard push by the City of Brownsville and TSC to make up lost ground due to the many errors committed by actors of the past. Indeed, they may need help from other universities and foundations to push the efforts along. But it has to get done, and it must be done.