RAMIRO'S SELF-SERVING PAEAN SHOWS DEARTH OF INTEGRITY

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Now comes Ramiro Gonzalez, a former City of Brownsville city manager's office director of Community and Government Affairs who had to resign or be fired after it was revealed that he and Mayor Trey Mendez were speculating in downtown real estate and dipping into grants from the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation for their personal benefit.

You remember Ramiro, he latched on to assist former mayor Tony Martinez in his bid to attract the University of Texas to place their offices in the downtown area by offering to use city funds to subsidize their staff's salaries, and included the doubling of parking meter rates as a way to achieve his aims. 

(At right, he parties the night away in Portugal where he and others, including former city manager Charlie Cabler, attended a wedding. Think they paid for all that?)

So Martinez called on Gonzalez to host a public hearing on the parking meter increase to gauge the sentiments of the public. The public resoundingly said "no" to the plan and you thought that would be it. But to everyone's surprise, the negative reception to the idea was turned on its head and the rates were raised despite the outcry. The public be damned.

And when Martinez campaigned against Trey Mendez for mayor, Gonzalez posed with Martinez in the as-yet-unopened-George Ramirez Performing Arts Academy that carried a $5 million price tag as one of the former mayor's accomplishments. 

When it was pointed out on social media that the use of public facilities for political purposes was a "no-no" it was quickly removed from Martinez's re-election Facebook page. They should have known better, and perhaps they did, and didn't care.

Undaunted, after Martinez lost, he became inseparable from Mendez and soon became his business partner speculating in real estate while on the city payroll.   

In other words, Gonzalez was a "fixer."

His $82,900 gig with city came to an inglorious end when people learned that he and Mendez had been buying historic properties and then getting funding from the BCIC to renovate them and then hoped to reap the profit of renting them to prospective tenants. 

In his recent paean making the rounds in sympathetic social media, Gonzalez paints himself as a savior of the downtown area and the main shaker and move to "progressive" (and personal enriching) projects at the expense of the taxpayer. Whether it was Martinez, now Mendez, and in the past other benefactors, he enjoyed a 12-year run that left him with a nice stash of cash and several choice properties.

"About 3 weeks ago, my 12-year service to the City of Brownsville came to an abrupt end," Gonzalez said. "To set the record straight I was asked to resign or get terminated and given a couple of hours to make that decision. Many know the reason and I won’t get into detail but I will say that I’ve been preaching about Downtown Revitalization for over 12 years and I had not had the opportunity to invest in a property downtown until now."

"Everything was transparent, we never hid anything, and both parties had their own realtor involved in the transaction," he said. "We are two private citizens investing in an area that we believe in."

No Ramiro, not really. It's no wonder he doesn't want to "get into detail." Mendez is an elected official and you were a public employee with access to inside information that was not available to the average Joe. Like shooting fish in a barrel. No conflict there, hey?

His politically-chameleon nature quickly gained the favor of commissioner Rose Gowen, whose gentrified "vision" of development had as its anchor the construction of bike and hike trails that would transform Brownsville, a border city, into the Austin-of-the Rio Grande. She became Miss Havisham to Ramiro, who signed on to her Great Expectations using taxpayer funds.

Gonzalez lists the pouring of public money into this skewered vision of our border city as the crowning glory of his accomplishments. He even took to riding bikes to show his commitment to Gowen's "vision."

TRAILS/GOWEN'S PET PROJECTS:
Belden Trail, Belden Connect, Belden 3 ($2 Million total)
West Rail Trail ($8.8 Million)
Southmost Trail ($9 Million committed)
Battlefield Extension - North of Battlefield ($2 Million)
Battlefield Extension - University Connect ($1 Million)
Large Murals (BTX and Cosmos) ($65,000)
Cannery Public Market Project ($2.1 Million)                                                            

TOTAL OF RAMIRO'S "PET" PROJECTS FOR HIS BENEFACTORS: $23,965,000

Tony, Trey, and Rose obviously used their sycophant to raid the resources of this poverty-stricken city and its long-suffering taxpayers to enhance their "legacy" and their bottom lines at the expense of basic services for the unwashed masses. 

Take your time with sidewalks, pay lip service to bus shelters, or other services – remember drainage?, we do, every time it rains – for the general public and please your masters. To them, Gonzalez was a pliant tool who lost sight of what a public servant should be.