CITY'S P.R. BROADBAND HYPE BELIES LAST WEEK'S FAILURE

 Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Remember just last week when your cell phone, Internet and WiFi failed after utility companies serving the city – Public Utility Board, AEP, Reliant, CPL, and Magic Valley – imposed rolling blackouts that sometimes left residences without power and connectivity for as long as three days or more?

Well, you wouldn't know that reading an onslaught of public relations productions in social media and the trade magazines where Mayor Trey Mendez, Communications Director Felipe Romero, and jack-of-all-trades (and master of none) bureaucratic survivor Ramiro Gonzalez (formally called Director of Government and Community Affairs) say that Brownsville's efforts are paying off and that they believe their heavy lifting has raised the city's national connectivity ranking.

Read closely what Gonzalez and Romero tell Next Century Cities on what they're basing their claim to fame:

"We’ve been working on a broadband plan over the last year. What we set out to do was take our name off that list and put ourselves on another list, which is one of the most connected cities in the US. So we’re working together with a consultant who’s done this sort of work before to come up with a broadband plan. That’ll let us know where the fiber is needed, how we can create this network, and how to make it available to our residents and businesses here locally."

So far the only item to make its way to the city commission agenda is the transfer of a 30-acre plot of city land toward Project Connect. And if the PUB is involved through its rights-of-way and poles, count on it to it find a way to hijack the project and take over it for its own purposes. It will be Tenaska deja vu all over again. 

The duo claims that the problem of Brownsville and nearby cities being at the lowest end of that connectivity measure has now been addressed and that they feel that they are already above the lowest national rankings. But they don't say exactly how high we've soared in the rankings. In short, these claims cannot be verified by the facts on the ground. And if that "connectivity" has improved, what happened last week?

And a Brooking article also reports that city officials have asserted that in late 2019 that as part of the effort, the city partnered with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas to develop a community strategy for broadband implementation in underserved areas. 

Several community entities like the Brownsville Independent School District and the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation (GBIC) have already partnered to fund a broadband feasibility study.

The last time GBIC was involved in a project to provide internet access it gave a $180,000 contract to Oscar Garcia Jr., the son of former UTB-TSC president Juliet Garcia.

Garcia Jr. talked the Brownsville Economic Development Corporation into giving him the GBIC cash for  for something called Gentnet Inc,. which was supposed to "address computer ownership and Internet access through community labs and K-20 system as well as cooperative telecommunications infrastructure projects to recruit commercial investments."

That – according to Gilbert Salinas of the BEDC – was supposed to "create at least 20 jobs, pay a minimum of $9 per hour per employee, and create primary jobs which are those that infuse new dollars into a local economy."

Nothing, of course, came out of it, but the money was gone and the only one to profit was Garcia Jr. Salinas, like the two new connectivity guys, talked mighty pretty. And now, with the city commission having removed the GBIC board they appointed and taking over running the economic development entity themselves, who's to say these kind of gifts to politically-connected supplicants won't start again?

Reading the comments of interviews with Sunshine Boys Romero and Gonzalez, it is obvious that a big part of the "strategy" is a large measure of self back-patting and elevated hype. 

Brownsville – just as the majority of cities along the U.S.-Mexico border – are poor communities. In fact, Brownsville has been ranked at the very bottom of both poverty and connectivity. 

When the BISD had to implement distance learning, it admitted that even despite the mass purchase of "hotspots" and tablets, a large number of the student body was unable to hook up because they lacked Internet access based mainly on the economic level of the families who could not afford to purchase the service from local providers.

The fact of the matter is that no Big Money – unlike the millions poured into Gonzalez's "plan" for commissioner Rose Gowen's bike and hike trails pet project – has been provided to buy and install the fiber optic cables to the city, especially to those barrios where the socioeconomic levels have remained near the bottom. 

Someone, after all, has to pay for it, and if they can't, what's to be done?

In the article in Next Century Cities, they admit this:

"Really it still comes down to accessibility and affordability and those are some of the biggest priorities for us in our plan to make sure that broadband is citywide and it’s accessible by anyone, and that it is affordable to different economic levels...There’s definitely going to be a part of our community that’s going to need help with adoption. I think the bigger issue though is affordability." 

Will it take another "study" and another "plan" – and job security for Gonzalez and arrogant misogynist Romero – and more laudatory articles published in social media and trade magazines by Mendez to somehow uplift the masses above their poverty and pay for broadband and have it magically appear across the city?

We don't think so. 

But then again, Brownsville seems satisfied to seek scurrilous titles such as being a "bicycle friendly" city and has pumped millions for trails, is the holder of Guinness World Records for largest zamba dancing line, and holds the title of the city whose residents have cast most lines with hooks in the waters of local resacas at one time.

Impressive.

We'll probably be regaled with more hype on how we're well on our way up the connectivity ladder despite the spotty service in the schools and across the city. 

Take it with a grain of salt. As we've found out from city hacks before, the hype is always belied by the reality on the ground, or, in the case of fiber optic cable penetration, the lack thereof.