BROWTOWN CITY MAYORS' SORDID RECORD OF SELF-DEALING

By Juan Montoya

A former Brownsville Public Utilities Board (PUB) employee remembers being sent to the home of former utility chairman Ruben Edelstein who had just finished his term as mayor of Brownsville in 1979.

His task? To hook up his electric meter once again. Apparently, the PUB allowed its mayors to get free electricity while they served their term, a type of mayoral benefit that came with the territory.

Fast forward to the term of Mayor Tony Martinez. During a meeting held Nov, 3, 2015,  he and the rest of the commission were considering the sale of tax-delinquent properties around the city. 

Minutes of the regular meeting where a unanimous city commission – after emerging from executive session where John Guevara, representing Linbarger, Goggan Blair and Sampson LLD and city attorney Mark Sossi outlined the bids/offers for 16 property offered for sale for tax delinquency – show they all voted to sell the properties for taxes owed to the highest bidders.

Included among them was the one highlighted in the graphic at right (2015-071). The street address was 1226 E. Van Buren, next to the mayor's old law office. 

Note that the minutes show that Martinez participated in the executive session discussion and later voted for the city to accept the bids for the 16 properties, including the one he had bid on.

Martinez had been trying to sell the property to the Rio Grande Valley Rural Legal Aid Inc., but the sale was stalled over a shortage of parking spaces. The tax delinquent property would give him enough space to address that issue.

His bid was for $5,200 and the appraised value by the Cameron County Appraisal District was $13,500. 

When Sossi reminded Martinez that he might have wanted to abstain from participation in the

executive session discussion and the voting, Martinez – imperious as ever – told Sossi that he had consulted with "a real attorney" and that he would participate and vote to sell himself the property. He did and acquired the property he needed to close the deal and pocket his profit.

Fast forward again. This time it's the Sept. 30, 2021 meeting of the board of the Brownsville Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation (BCIC). Before them were four applications for the Business Improvement and Growth (BIG) 2.0 Program grant applications. 

One of the applications was for a $200,00 grant from Urban 8 Properties LLC for improvement for the historical Coca Cola Plant building on Washington Street downtown. What no one knew was that Urban 8 was formed in June and that the principals were Brownsville Mayor Juan "Trey" Mendez and former Government and Community Affairs director Ramiro Gonzalez. 

The pair, both managing members of the LLC,  had purchased the property for $382,000 last August through a loan with Texas National Bank. 

The pair had bought the property from Cameron Peralta, an elderly woman who could neither speak nor read English – and owed more than $12,000 on a delinquent-tax lien, in August and then had applied for the $200,000 grant through the BCIC, a board whose members are appointed by the mayor (Mendez) and the city commission.

When the identity of the Urban 8 property owners was revealed on social media prior to the meeting of the BCIC where their application was to be considered, Gonzalez resigned his $82,900 city position under City Manager Noel Bernal.

The BCIC pulled an item from their agenda before the meeting. Ominously, Cameron County District

Attorney Luis V. Saenz and cadre of prosecutors arrived at the meeting and waited for the vote on the applications. 

Now we hear that Saenz is combing through the BCIC grants to local businesses to see what other grants may have been tainted by potential conflict of interest and self-dealing of the city commission and the board members of the BCIC.

Attorney Tony Martinez and Attorney Trey Mendez apparently see the initials of their names (ATM) as an entitlement to profit from their public positions.

How things change, and yet remain the same.