WAS IT A GOOD IDEA FOR COMMISSION TO TAKE OVER GBIC?

 By Juan Montoya

With one fell swoop at their last meeting, the commissioners for the City of Brownsville voted to remove all five members of the board of the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation and appoint themselves to fill the vacancies.

Just before that, during a previous  meeting, they voted to allow people to serve on more than one city board, clearing the way for them to take over the Type A economic development corporation which gets $5 million each year from its share of a quarter penny of city sales taxes. Currently it has $13 million in disposable cash for its activities.

Under state law, the city commission must appoint a board of directors with at least five members to serve terms up to six years. The statute does not specify qualifications. The board members serve at the pleasure of the commission and may be removed and replaced at any time and without cause. All funding agreements approved by the GBIC must also be approved by the commissioners.

Under the motion made by city commissioner Ben Neece, the entire commission will now serve as an "interim" GBIC board of directors for a year. 

So does this mean that the commissioners will have to approve in their role as a city council all the funding agreements they approve as GBIC members? 

It could also turn out to be a double-edged sword since any failure would be placed at their door. And addressing city issues while they constitute a quorum is another land mine they must avoid. The GBIC is mainly focused on job creation and attracting manufacturers to the city while the (Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation (BCIC) is concerned mostly with quality-of-life projects.

So what can we expect from the city commission (AKA) GBIC board?

When CEO Mario Lozoya was hired in 2018,commissioner Nurith Galonsky, then a GBIC board member, – with Neece's aid – sued in district court trying to overturn the choice. She and others were against his hiring but didn't have the votes to determine who was hired. Since then, the city's worst kept secret is that they were after his head.

If Galonsky and Neece, now sitting as GBIC members, can convince a majority of the board, that is now not a so far-fetched idea. We smell a settlement and payoff in the works.

But what abut the other commissioners? Rose : "La Chisquiada" Gwen, who openly declared as a candidate that she was against city commissioners serving on any board, quickly changed her tune and was appointed the the BCIC where she could steer funds toward her hike and bike trails and cyclobias, a costly endeavor that tied up city staff and resources and closed areas of downtown.

But it gets better. In July 2019, The GBIC brought a plan before the city commission by a Mexican confections company that was going to manufacture candy for sale nationwide. It was going to add 15 jobs and retain another 20 at $15.00 an hour.

The project was nixed when Gowen complained that it was a not good for people's wellness and healthy habits and the project was dropped. So at least 15 more families were deprived of an opportunity to improve their economic well being to please her druhters. Let them ride bike for their health instead, was the reasoning. Then she held up approving the GBIC budget because she wanted GBIC to pitch in for T-shirts advocating healthy living. (Uh?)

How about commissioner Jessica Tetreau? You remember her when she was running for reelection and said she religiously attended the meetings of the GBIC board where she was a member. Well, a check of the attendance proved that was not exactly true. In fact, it was a falsehood.

According to GBIC attendance records of the last two years she was on board, Tetreau missed on the following dates and was late or left early on others. They were:

09-07-2017 (left early)

11-29-2017 (absence)

01-31-2018 (absence)

02-01-2018 (absence)

03-01-2018 (was late)

04-04-2018 (absence)

04-19-2018 (absence)

05-03-2018 (absence)

08-16-2018 (absence)

09-20-2018 (absence)

10-12-2018 (absence)

01-03-2019 (absence)

3-21-2019 (absence, prior commitment)

4-18-2019 (absence)

5-14-2019 (absence)

6-17-2019 (absence)

6-21-2019 (absence)

7-18-2019 (absence)

And let's consider commissioner Joel Munguia. He is the photo copy of Tetreau in his attendance of city commission meetings, spotty at best. We can only surmise that he doesn't like to attend meetings. For all practical purposes, when there's a controversial issue on the agenda, Munguia is MIA.

How about John Cowen? When the GBIC was trying to attract Indiana-based Steel Dynamics to construct its new $1.9 billion flat roll steel mill that was expected to create about 600 good-paying jobs and produce 3 million tons of steel annually and would have doubled the city's tax base, they asked the GBIC to procure them land.

When Lozoya told Dynamic Steel officials he thought he could get the necessary property by purchasing land around their planned industrial corridor, they told him the GBIC was again on their short list. 

GBIC figured it could acquire the necessary acreage (1,100-acres) for their operation. 

The first problem was to the east. Lozoya met with the GBIC board Feb. 21, 2019 to discuss the properties. On at least two occasions he gave Cowen a detailed description of the project and indicated the properties they needed. On February 26, they met with Coastal Realty to discuss then plan and authorize them to acquire the properties.

There were three parcels of land – the 110- and 142-acre tracts owned by the MD Wheeler Tract and the 37 acres owned by the Nunez Family. (Those properties are located on the northeast side of the project on the map above.

But somehow, local real estate speculator Patricio Sampayo – who was on the board of the Brownsville Housing Authority with Cowen and is his close associate – heard of the GBIC plans and by the time  Coastal Realty approached the owners on the first week of March, he "somehow" had secured an Option Agreement Contract on the entire 289 acres.

When Dynamic Steel learned that GBIC could not deliver the real estate for their mill, they emailed Lozoya (a copy of the email was made available to the former board members) that they would find an alternative site somewhere else. They chose Sinton.

After Sampayo's options expired, the GBIC finally purchased them, but the steel mill was out of the barn already.

And so, for lack of that land, the City of Brownsville lost a $1.9 billion plant that would bring 600 good-paying steel mill jobs.  

Cowen had suggested that Lozoya guide the steel mill to the port where other people had land aplenty. In fact, it is also curious that when the GBIC went before the city's Planning and Zoning Commission, Abraham Galonsky, Nurith's father, also suggested that the mills owners move north where he and others have land.

The P&Z then turned down an application to zone the area industrial, effectively hammering the last nail in the steel-mill coffin. 

Ah, then there's mayor Trey Mendez. His business partner in a pizza parlor Graham Sevier-Schultz – a bike enthusiast in the Gowen tradition – was appointed first to the BCIC and the to the GBIC as chairman. After board members turned down his idea to fund pay-day loans and child care  because they did not comply with Type A requirements for funding, he flew in a rage and said: "The motion dies, and so does this organization. This is totally ridiculous."

Well, no, not really. In fact it was Sevier-Schultz and the rest of the board who were removed by the usual suspects mentioned above.

 

And there you have the lineup that's set to take over the GBIC. Why did they initiate a nationwide search for a CEO is they then turned around and sabotaged economic development projects that could have improved the economic situation of local residents because they did not get their way?

And given this track record of the commissioners vis-a-vis the GBIC what can we possibly expect except the same misguided personal-interest policies they have demonstrated through their acts?