FRAUDULENT APPOINTMENT: CITY SECRETARY, TOTAL MISALIGNMENT?

 Special to El Rrun-Rrun

She got up early Wednesday because she needed to get a certified copy of her son's original birth certificate.

She didn't think it would take that long because on Tuesday afternoon she had called and asked what she needed besides ID and the $23 fee.

"Nothing, just show up," she had been told. "We're open everyday before 8:30 a.m. Tomorrow, on Wednesday we close at 12:00 and open again at 1:30 to 4:30 p.m."

On Wednesday, walking up early before the clinic where she works in the health care industry opened its doors, she was at the City Plaza door at 8:30 a.m., only to be told she could not be a walk in, but that she had to make an appointment to see a clerk.

"But I called on the phone yesterday and they told me I could just walk in," she told the clerk.

"Not anymore," she was told. "You have to make an appointment now."

So, what was that on Tuesday, she asked herself, a fake, a fraudulent appointment I made over the phone?

City Manager Noel Bernal who sees himself as the High Priest of Corporate Weenieism, and intones buzzwords of municipal planning as he performs the Rites of Total Alignment. 

It is doubtful that the city commission members – and neither does a single one of his sycophants – understands a word that he babbles, but nod knowingly and say nothing as he speaks random bullshit about a municipal culture at staff meetings in the hopes that he will speak endlessly at them and forget to notice that the buzzwords didn't really mean a thing.

A kind of new Culture of Balderdash, maybe?

One target of his Total Alignment, former Presiding Municipal Judge Bobby Lerma, who was unceremoniously dumped by a Bernal edict, was gobbled up immediately by the City of Port Isabel, whose needs aligned perfectly with Lerma's dismissal with their need for a good judge. 

Does he have a new judge in mind besides Interim Municipal Judge Rigoberto Flores in mind? And was there some collusion in Lerma's replacement with City Attorney Rene De Coss before the move? City Secretary Laure Morgan ($99,999), Asst. City Manager Helen Ramirez ($195,000), PIO Felipe Romero ($97,649), etc., were all brought in by Bernal to replace local people. 

They might need bigger carpet bags than the ones they brought with them.

Not long ago, people were complaining to Bernal about only two windows being open at the payment counter at the city secretary's office and he said that they were the only ones authorized to take payments. The visitors noticed some city secretary office employees were sitting idle at their desks while only two clerk were kept busy taking payments from the clients.

Bernal said that the people in lines of people could wait instead of having the idle staffers open other windows. Isn't there some kind of cross training in this Total Alignment philosophy? This bodes badly for the woman who was seeking a birth certificate from that office.

We guess that the Brownsville Mission statement has changed. It used to be:

"To provide our customers efficient and quality municipal services with courtesy and concern."

Now the Bernal Total Alignment city mission statement must read: "To make citizens wait before we provide our customers efficient and quality municipal services with courtesy and concern, at our convenience and for a small fee, of course."