SUPER DUPER SCOREBOARD: BISD=0, ZENDEJAS=$461,201

Facilities meeting: B. Sams Stadium Scoreboard replacement (Dec. 5)

1. Recommend approval to authorize administration to accept the Sams Stadium Scoreboard Project as substantially complete. (Tuesday board meeting agenda)

3. Discussion, consideration and possible action to request a third party compliance review in January 2019 of all 2015 TRE projects and all 2018 tax increase projects; to include artificial turf and the stadium/campus scoreboards. (Board Member Request - SPA) (Tuesday board meeting agenda)

By Juan Montoya
Remember when then-Cameron County Auditor Mark Yates got charged and arrested for buying insurance without the county commission's approval?

And one of the reasons that Texas Southmost College gave for sacking former president Lily Tercero was also for buying windstorm insurance without going to the board for approval.

Well, guess what?

Some time back Brownsville Independent School District superintendent Esperanza Zendejas was told by the board to bring back the specific warranty length for "coach" Joe Rodriguez's super-duper $1.4 million scoreboard at Sams Stadium before she made any payments to the vendor.


Several members were leery that the vendor VCRNOW initially said the turnkey board had warranties for 10 years, only to have the superintendent during the Sept. 4 recommend that the board approve the project was "substantially complete" and authorize payment.

During that meeting, Zendejas acknowledged that there had been some technical difficulties with video without sound and several panels that had to be replaced. Some trustees wanted a clarification of the duration of the warranties on the scoreboard parts (initially said by the vendor to be for 10 years) since the backup to the agenda item listed warranties on some part for two years and others for five.

And since the board was not up and ready for graduation this year, the BISD had to pay a "rental fee" to VCRNOW to bring a portable screen and pay for technician. The cost for the rental and the technician for graduation ceremonies was $7,950 plus a $550 hotel fee for his lodging. ($550? Did he stay on the Island?)

Unable to give the board a definite answer then (September 4) to their questions, Zendejas asked the board to pull the item and told the members that she would come back to them with the answers to their questions.

But rather than come back to the board before issuing the second payment (the first was approved by the board June 5 for $770,000), Zendejas issued a second payment in the amount of $461,208 on her own.

Recently, during the the meeting of the Facilities Committee Dec. 5, some members questioned Zendejas on the progress on the project and she told them that the project was substantially complete and that he had already made the second payment to the vendor.

But hey, wait, members asked: Weren't you supposed to get back with the board before proceeding with the payment and acceptance of the project?

Well, yes, she vacillated, I guess that was just "an error."

Now, we're not talking peanuts here. Anyway you slice it, $1.4 million is a lot of cash for one person to unilaterally decide for the board on issuing payments and approving the project, especially when there is a question on the quality of the product being purchased.

In the agenda item listed above for Tuesday's meeting, she is asking that the board accept the board as "substantially complete" and pay the $168,716 balance on the $1.4 million.

In one of her rare moments of lucidity, trustee Minerva Peña said that when you buy a  Rolls Royce you expect it to act like a Rolls and not a Pinto or a Mustang.

"They don't make those anymore," she said.

Yates got charged and arrested and hauled off to Carrizales when he acted unilaterally. Tercero was fired.

Will there be any repercussions for Zendejas?

Will we see her, as we did Yates, in an orange jumpsuit, or barring that, handed her walking papers for disregarding the directives of the board?