TIT FOR TAT: AHUMADA SWINGS FOR THE FENCE VS. ATKINSON

By Pat Ahumada

Charlie Atkinson, I just saw how you were forced to respond to my post and sign your name to address me directly, because you always post anonymously. 

Let’s get this straight: you always bragged of being the  mayor because you controlled the commission and the city manager. This emboldened you to be a bully, create chaos on the commission, repeatedly asked me to resign, and tried to undermine me.

You gave (former city manager) Charlie Cabler the golden parachute, which was a year’s severance pay when the city charter only allows 30 days pay. You protected Cabler, who in turn allowed you to do as you pleased, including hiring people, micro managing the sports park, and creating the culture of corruption with which we are dealing with today.

Don’t you recall, how you both frantically made lots of calls to Washington to block my complaint
against the misappropriations of HUD funds, which resulted in the city being fined $2 million and the
loss of grants for a year due to bad management.? 

Don’t forget how Cabler protected you with the sports park audit by removing the auditor who was finding irregularities and replacing him with one that would give you a pass on those irregularities. You also bullied PUB to balance the city’s budget by extorting millions above what the city charter allowed, because Cabler could not balance the budget. 

Bad management! I am the only one on the commission who made it clear that Cabler needed to do his job by cutting expenses or proposing a tax increase to balance the budget, which I would have voted against. My reason for stating that was to expose how bad of a manger he was, but you bailed him out, which led to higher utility rates. 

In your post refers to my pet advocacy, but again Cabler did next to nothing to help us in this cause. In fact, you were so jealous of us hosting golf tournaments for the pets, that you conspired with Cabler to create the City Manager’s golf tournaments and extorted money from city vendors to fund your pet projects through Cabler. This was finally exposed when Cabler’s secret slush fund became public when he was forced out of city management. 

The alliance to undermine me as mayor worked well for Cabler and you, but I promise you, Karma will come to the both of you in time.

My consolation is the path to perdition is full of people like you. 

Hopefully, people will see how dangerous Cabler would be as mayor, because he has a lot influence over the Brownsville police department, which was also used to frame me and he was a part of it. In spite of all this, you did not get me to resign, I stood up to you and still managed to get a lot done.

As you will recall, when I got elected in May 2007, both you and Rick sat in my living room to discuss the best way to proceed as a team on the city commission, but you refused to accept me as the mayor who should be the quarterback on the team. 

According to you, you had seniority on the commission, which made you the quarterback on the team, which was ludicrous. I pointed out the fact that by default the mayor is looked upon as the head of the city and is the quarter back, but that it requires a team effort to be successful. And, you proceeded to become the de facto mayor who created a lot of chaos on the commission.

In case your forgot, I live five houses from you and am the one who found your infant son in diapers in the middle of a curved street by himself many years ago, who could have easily been killed by a
speeding car coming from the blind side of the curve. You repaid me by being a bully to undermine me every chance you got, instead of working for the benefit of our city and you bragged about it.

Your allegation that I reported you to CBP is a lie. If I had, I would tell you.

And you refer to the check indictment, which you know Cabler and Pete (Gonzalez) were responsible for. They conveniently shredded the check log that shows who took/stole the check and it was not me, because I had never set foot in the finance department. Cabler was not doing his job, as you claim by pushing that I be prosecuted, but it was you, your cohorts and the politics to remove me since I would not resign.

Government records are supposed to be preserved, especially in a criminal case, not shredded, which served their purpose to make it look like that I took the check, which was proven not to be true.

You made reference to the sweepstakes raid, which Chief Orlando Rodriguez knows was politics
targeting me only, as Carmen’s and Charlies sweepstakes operated for 15 years legally and were not
aided. Chief Orlando Rodriguez under oath would have to admit that I submitted in writing a request
asking if I needed to close my store voluntarily two weeks before the raid and he told me not to close
until he investigated if sweepstakes was no longer going to be allowed in Brownsville.

You state lies about me wanting to increase PUB rates. The minutes refute your claims as my record is clear; I constantly fought for lower rates and successfully introduced lowering late penalty fees from 10 to 6 percent which helps mostly the poor.

Mark my words. 

You are probably doing the same at BISD as you did at the city to get your personal agenda to get transferred to a High School to later become the BISD Athletic Director. After all, you got hired during a hiring freeze based on the good old boy system with connections, not based on qualifications.

You will also push to get all the medicals done with a certain doctor, who in turn will provide you funding for your shenanigans.

There is much resistance in doing what is right, because the easy path is to play ball as you often told
me, but your kind of ball has created a culture of corruption. You may get away with a lot in the short term, but in the end, you will get what is coming to you.

I believe good prevails and hopefully Brownsville citizens will start standing up to people like you.

I did and I paid the price, but I have my honor and integrity, while you are morally bankrupt and not to be trusted. Public service is giving of oneself. It is not about you, which you will never understand.