MARTINEZ USES CITY ASSETS FOR POLITICAL CAMPAIGN

By Juan Montoya

It will cost city taxpayers more than $5.6  million when the  cost was originally pegged at $5 million.

That is what happened with the city's new Cultural Arts Center in the old Stegman Building at the corner of 10th and Washington streets.

The city administration never blinked an eye to at least eight change orders that boosted the price by another $500,000 after the Harlingen-based Alpha Contractor ran through the "contingency" fund that was included in the construction budget.

For months after they started in 2015, the building was literally gutted and only the shell remained. And businesses and pedestrians have had to endure a closed street that forced them - and commerce - to give the area wide berth. Now, almost five years later, the building is still not done, but it is serving as a bully pulpit for Mayor Tony Martinez to seek reelection.

Now the bottomless barrel is nearly done, it is time for it to serve as a reelection campaign prop for  Martinez.

Martinez, along with the city's "governmental affairs analyst" officer Ramiro Gonzalez at a $65,000 salary, are featured on a Facebook campaign ad that shows them touring the building, which is not open to the public yet, and asking the voters to keep the city "moving forward" and reelect Martinez to another disastrous four years at its helm.

"We've been at it for eight years," Gonzalez intones.

"We need a little more time to realize some of those dreams," Martinez agrees.

The ad features Gonzalez - who is on the  clock - and Martinez marveling at the inside of the structure and talking about the "next project" that is bound to come with Martinez in the mayor's seat. Not once in the ad is the lowly Brownsville taxpayer given credit for paying for Gonzalez's salary or the change-order boondoggle. The ad makes it seem like projects like this would never happen if Tone wasn't around.

Will other candidates for the city commission be allowed to use the Stegman Building and city employees on the clock to campaign for office? Or is it only Martinez who can do as he pleases and take credit for the publicly-funded project? Can Trey Mendez and Charlie Cabler do the same thing? Is it proper for this to happen?

Time and time again the company went to the city with change orders totaling more than $500,000. The original contract cost was to be $5,030,600 with a "contingency fund" of $306,400.

However, the contractor went through that sum like a hot knife through butter in seven change orders. Since it was part of the "contingency" fund included in the original contract, the change orders did  not have to get commission approval.

After having gone through that, the contractor and city officials came back to the commission and get an additional $247,435 for the eighth change order that included another $100,000 as a "contingency."

With the approval of the last change order, it means that they got and additional $553,835 added to the original contract price of  $5,030,600 and that the project will end up costing a total of $5,584,435.

And then someone pointed out – and submitted the photos here – that the project is literally crawling with Harlingen subcontractors.

If the taxpayers of Brownsville are footing the bill and putting up with the congestion and negative impact on downtown businesses, shouldn't the city have at least required that local subcontractors be hired to keep some of those millions here?

But what no one knew was that the overpriced building was to provide a $5.6 million soapbox for Martinez's reelection compliments of the  city taxpayers.