Tetreau Fails to See the Big Picture, Turns Her Back on the People, Claims Plagiarism
By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon
This past Tuesday was not a good day for the residents of the street formerly known as East Fronton. At the city commission meeting, the petition asking the city to rename McNair Family Drive back to East Fronton Street failed by a vote of 4-3. Joining Commissioners Joel Munguia, Rose Gowen, and John Cowen was the District 2 Commissioner, Jessica Tetreau. Before casting her "no" vote, Tetreau launched into a solliloquy echoing the same sentiments the other three "no" votes did previously — they all thought the city's ordinance was too confusing and too "cookie cutter," having come from another Texas municipality.
Some Brownsville politicians have forgotten how to serve the people. I can understand why. Having no real, legitimate newspaper and relatively little television news coverage, many of our local politicians are hardly ever held accountable for their actions, votes, and decisions. Enter the local blogosphere. While I do not consider this blog the preeminent Brownsville Blog, I have seen (thanks to a couple of friends who have decided to help me) an uptick in readership. However, I am talking about the more established blogs like El Rrun Rrun, The McHale Report, and The Brownsville Observer. The local blogs do an excellent job in covering a lot of local stories and politics. These blogs aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and local politicians have to realize they are all forces to be reckoned with. They need to learn the golden rule — the blogosphere giveth, and the blogosphere taketh away.
I really don't want my blog to turn into a negative space where I spew hatred and vitriol towards anybody. I am not in the habit of writing "take down" pieces. I do, however, think it is our responsibility to inform the public and try to hold our elected officials accountable for their actions and decisions.
I know my pieces are wordy, and I know one of my biggest problems is getting to the point in a concise manner. I fancy myself more of a storyteller than an actual journalist, so I beg your forgiveness for taking a while to get to what I'm trying to say.
When I was in college, I took advanced courses in government and public policy. If there's one thing I learned about government service and democratic republic politics is the people vote for you because they align their beliefs with yours and they think you have their best interests in mind. I understand that may be an extremely idealistic vision of what a politician is supposed to be, but at its base, that's exactly what a public servant is supposed to be. Politicians are supposed to listen to their constituents and do what they can to address their concerns.
The majority of the Brownsville city commission did not address the concerns of the majority of the residents of McNair Family Drive. After all the petitions were signed and resigned, 78% of the residents and petitioners wanted the name changed back to East Fronton Street. It really is this simple, and I'll write it in all caps to make sure I get my point across — THE CITY ASKED THE RESIDENTS TO FOLLOW A PROCEDURE AND THEY'D HAVE THEIR STREET RENAMED. THEY FOLLOWED THE PROCEDURE EXACTLY AS THEY WERE TOLD AND THE COMMISSION STILL DIDN'T FOLLOW THROUGH ON THEIR PROMISE.
Again, after the dust settled, four commissioners turned their backs on the people. For the record, Commissioners Ben Neece and Nurith Galonsky Pizana fought valiantly to convince the other members of the commission to do the right thing, but their pleas fell on deaf ears — and here it comes...the blogosphere taketh away.
Several blog articles were written criticizing the poor decision made by the city commission. I won't get into all the reasons and I won't repeat what all the other articles have said — you can look them up and read them for yourself.
Jessica Tetreau, the District 2 Commissioner, is very active on her Facebook page. She loves posting about her accomplishments and accolades. I visited her page because she had made a post asking her friends to report a picture that was being circulated. The picture was a photo of the commissioner with a word bubble that read, "I AM GOING TO VOTE AGAINST E FRONTON BECAUSE I CANNOT HURT HARRY MCNAIR'S FEELINGS. YOU THE PEOPLE WILL GET OVER IT! MCNAIR FOR EVER (sic)!! F-U PEOPLE." Commissioner Tetreau mentioned she would be alerting the authorities so they can follow up on this issue. She is apparently under the impression she is being misquoted and she thinks people will believe this is an actual quote she said at the commission meeting.
It appears Commissioner Tetreau believes the Brownsville Police Department is her own personal Stasi; she thinks the BPD is at her beck and call. She made that perfectly clear when the phone conversation she had in January with David Dale was released. She was accused of using her position as an elected official to infer she would be able to convince the right people to hire the candidate of her own choosing for poice chief. She was trying to get Lieutenant Dale, then a candidate for Brownsville Police Chief, to rework downtown's bike patrol to her liking.
She is an elected official. Seldom does a day go by where a politician isn't burned in effigy in one way, shape, or form. Anybody who has a functioning brain in their head knows the image isn't trying to display an actual direct quote — the picture is editorializing how the betrayed residents of the former East Fronton Street feel.
When I was visiting the commissioner's page, I noticed she was very interested in reporting the picture and having it taken down, but I noticed she hadn't addressed her decision to vote the way she did, so I asked her if she could address the vote and asked her to specifically list her reasons behind her decision.
I wrote: Instead of asking your friends to report a picture, perhaps you should put out a statement saying why you failed to support something the people wanted in renaming East Fronton Street? The city's legal department made it clear the commission had the green light to approve the petition, the citizens of East Fronton Street overwhelmingly supported the initiateive, yet you sat there and voted against it.
She replied, "...I think I made my position clear at the meeting..."
No, she didn't. She did not make anything clear at the meeting. The gist of what she said at the meeting was no matter how she was going to vote, some people were going to be upset. That was the main idea of what she said before she cast her vote.
She went on to write, "Our policy was COPY AND PASTED from the Greenville, Texas site..."
This is key to her argument. She keeps pivoting to this. Her argument is we shouldn't have just used an ordinance that was created for another city. My question to that is, why not? What's wrong with using another city's ordinance? Their streets aren't paved with gold bricks or cobblestone. They're just streets. Why would we have to reinvent the wheel? If another city has a street naming ordinance that works, why wouldn't you want to use it in our city? Her argument makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
She goes on to say, "I have voiced that our city FAILED the public and commissioners by not creating a policy that was custom tailored to protect our historical assets..."
Seriously? The historical asset is East Fronton Street. There have been article upon article written stating how the street's name since the time of the Civil War has historic significance. There is nothing historical about having a street named after your family. That said, there is already a park on East St. Charles Street named for McNair's father. If you wanted recognition for their entire family, rename the park McNair Family Park. The city commission had absolutely no problem with ignoring history and our city's historical assets when they chose to rename the street in the first place. Believe me when I say I care more about historical preservation than most people do. Your actions have NOT preserved anything. Also, I like how Commissioner Tetreau has absolutely no problem passing the buck and throwing the city administrators under the bus by saying they failed to do their job properly.
One of the commissioners other posts makes reference to an inference that we are paying someone in the city, who I assume is the city attorney, 80,000 dollars a year and all he did was "copy and paste" another city's ordinance and replaced their name with "Brownsville." She claims if this were school, they would have been expelled for plagiarism.
I'll state the obvious. This isn't school. This is the real world. I already said it, but I'll say it again. If there's something that is working for one city, I don't see why other cities can't adopt the same policy. There is no such thing as plagiarism in creating and enacting public policy and city ordinances.
Another quesiton begs to be asked. When the city approved the ordinance in the first place, why weren't any of these concerns brought up at that time? When the ordinance was proposed, why didn't you ask the city administrators to come up with a custom tailored policy rather than one adopted from another city? You could have directed the city administrators to make changes to the ordinance before asking the residents of East Fronton to circulate their petition for a second time.
You could have done things differently, but you didn't. The bottom line is you gave the residents the rules of the game, they followed the rules of the game, and when you didn't like that they were doing what you asked them to do, you changed the rules of the game. That is an extremely unfair position to have.
I understand you, and the other commissioners who voted against the petition, are hiding behind what you believe to be a flawed ordinance, but you were the ones who approved the ordinance to begin with.
I think it is in very poor taste to go against the wishes of the majority of the community, then blame the city attorney and other city administrators as the ones who failed the commission. They didn't fail you. You failed us.
Please let that sink in. You failed us. For all your campaigning about wanting to serve the people and for all the posts about doing things for the community you make on your Facebook page, at the end of the day you proved who your constituency is.
It is apparent Commissioner Tetreau serves her constituency well. It's a pity, however, that it's a constituency of one.
This past Tuesday was not a good day for the residents of the street formerly known as East Fronton. At the city commission meeting, the petition asking the city to rename McNair Family Drive back to East Fronton Street failed by a vote of 4-3. Joining Commissioners Joel Munguia, Rose Gowen, and John Cowen was the District 2 Commissioner, Jessica Tetreau. Before casting her "no" vote, Tetreau launched into a solliloquy echoing the same sentiments the other three "no" votes did previously — they all thought the city's ordinance was too confusing and too "cookie cutter," having come from another Texas municipality.
Some Brownsville politicians have forgotten how to serve the people. I can understand why. Having no real, legitimate newspaper and relatively little television news coverage, many of our local politicians are hardly ever held accountable for their actions, votes, and decisions. Enter the local blogosphere. While I do not consider this blog the preeminent Brownsville Blog, I have seen (thanks to a couple of friends who have decided to help me) an uptick in readership. However, I am talking about the more established blogs like El Rrun Rrun, The McHale Report, and The Brownsville Observer. The local blogs do an excellent job in covering a lot of local stories and politics. These blogs aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and local politicians have to realize they are all forces to be reckoned with. They need to learn the golden rule — the blogosphere giveth, and the blogosphere taketh away.
I really don't want my blog to turn into a negative space where I spew hatred and vitriol towards anybody. I am not in the habit of writing "take down" pieces. I do, however, think it is our responsibility to inform the public and try to hold our elected officials accountable for their actions and decisions.
I know my pieces are wordy, and I know one of my biggest problems is getting to the point in a concise manner. I fancy myself more of a storyteller than an actual journalist, so I beg your forgiveness for taking a while to get to what I'm trying to say.
When I was in college, I took advanced courses in government and public policy. If there's one thing I learned about government service and democratic republic politics is the people vote for you because they align their beliefs with yours and they think you have their best interests in mind. I understand that may be an extremely idealistic vision of what a politician is supposed to be, but at its base, that's exactly what a public servant is supposed to be. Politicians are supposed to listen to their constituents and do what they can to address their concerns.
The majority of the Brownsville city commission did not address the concerns of the majority of the residents of McNair Family Drive. After all the petitions were signed and resigned, 78% of the residents and petitioners wanted the name changed back to East Fronton Street. It really is this simple, and I'll write it in all caps to make sure I get my point across — THE CITY ASKED THE RESIDENTS TO FOLLOW A PROCEDURE AND THEY'D HAVE THEIR STREET RENAMED. THEY FOLLOWED THE PROCEDURE EXACTLY AS THEY WERE TOLD AND THE COMMISSION STILL DIDN'T FOLLOW THROUGH ON THEIR PROMISE.
Again, after the dust settled, four commissioners turned their backs on the people. For the record, Commissioners Ben Neece and Nurith Galonsky Pizana fought valiantly to convince the other members of the commission to do the right thing, but their pleas fell on deaf ears — and here it comes...the blogosphere taketh away.
Several blog articles were written criticizing the poor decision made by the city commission. I won't get into all the reasons and I won't repeat what all the other articles have said — you can look them up and read them for yourself.
Jessica Tetreau, the District 2 Commissioner, is very active on her Facebook page. She loves posting about her accomplishments and accolades. I visited her page because she had made a post asking her friends to report a picture that was being circulated. The picture was a photo of the commissioner with a word bubble that read, "I AM GOING TO VOTE AGAINST E FRONTON BECAUSE I CANNOT HURT HARRY MCNAIR'S FEELINGS. YOU THE PEOPLE WILL GET OVER IT! MCNAIR FOR EVER (sic)!! F-U PEOPLE." Commissioner Tetreau mentioned she would be alerting the authorities so they can follow up on this issue. She is apparently under the impression she is being misquoted and she thinks people will believe this is an actual quote she said at the commission meeting.
It appears Commissioner Tetreau believes the Brownsville Police Department is her own personal Stasi; she thinks the BPD is at her beck and call. She made that perfectly clear when the phone conversation she had in January with David Dale was released. She was accused of using her position as an elected official to infer she would be able to convince the right people to hire the candidate of her own choosing for poice chief. She was trying to get Lieutenant Dale, then a candidate for Brownsville Police Chief, to rework downtown's bike patrol to her liking.
She is an elected official. Seldom does a day go by where a politician isn't burned in effigy in one way, shape, or form. Anybody who has a functioning brain in their head knows the image isn't trying to display an actual direct quote — the picture is editorializing how the betrayed residents of the former East Fronton Street feel.
When I was visiting the commissioner's page, I noticed she was very interested in reporting the picture and having it taken down, but I noticed she hadn't addressed her decision to vote the way she did, so I asked her if she could address the vote and asked her to specifically list her reasons behind her decision.
I wrote: Instead of asking your friends to report a picture, perhaps you should put out a statement saying why you failed to support something the people wanted in renaming East Fronton Street? The city's legal department made it clear the commission had the green light to approve the petition, the citizens of East Fronton Street overwhelmingly supported the initiateive, yet you sat there and voted against it.
She replied, "...I think I made my position clear at the meeting..."
No, she didn't. She did not make anything clear at the meeting. The gist of what she said at the meeting was no matter how she was going to vote, some people were going to be upset. That was the main idea of what she said before she cast her vote.
She went on to write, "Our policy was COPY AND PASTED from the Greenville, Texas site..."
This is key to her argument. She keeps pivoting to this. Her argument is we shouldn't have just used an ordinance that was created for another city. My question to that is, why not? What's wrong with using another city's ordinance? Their streets aren't paved with gold bricks or cobblestone. They're just streets. Why would we have to reinvent the wheel? If another city has a street naming ordinance that works, why wouldn't you want to use it in our city? Her argument makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
She goes on to say, "I have voiced that our city FAILED the public and commissioners by not creating a policy that was custom tailored to protect our historical assets..."
Seriously? The historical asset is East Fronton Street. There have been article upon article written stating how the street's name since the time of the Civil War has historic significance. There is nothing historical about having a street named after your family. That said, there is already a park on East St. Charles Street named for McNair's father. If you wanted recognition for their entire family, rename the park McNair Family Park. The city commission had absolutely no problem with ignoring history and our city's historical assets when they chose to rename the street in the first place. Believe me when I say I care more about historical preservation than most people do. Your actions have NOT preserved anything. Also, I like how Commissioner Tetreau has absolutely no problem passing the buck and throwing the city administrators under the bus by saying they failed to do their job properly.
One of the commissioners other posts makes reference to an inference that we are paying someone in the city, who I assume is the city attorney, 80,000 dollars a year and all he did was "copy and paste" another city's ordinance and replaced their name with "Brownsville." She claims if this were school, they would have been expelled for plagiarism.
I'll state the obvious. This isn't school. This is the real world. I already said it, but I'll say it again. If there's something that is working for one city, I don't see why other cities can't adopt the same policy. There is no such thing as plagiarism in creating and enacting public policy and city ordinances.
Another quesiton begs to be asked. When the city approved the ordinance in the first place, why weren't any of these concerns brought up at that time? When the ordinance was proposed, why didn't you ask the city administrators to come up with a custom tailored policy rather than one adopted from another city? You could have directed the city administrators to make changes to the ordinance before asking the residents of East Fronton to circulate their petition for a second time.
You could have done things differently, but you didn't. The bottom line is you gave the residents the rules of the game, they followed the rules of the game, and when you didn't like that they were doing what you asked them to do, you changed the rules of the game. That is an extremely unfair position to have.
I understand you, and the other commissioners who voted against the petition, are hiding behind what you believe to be a flawed ordinance, but you were the ones who approved the ordinance to begin with.
I think it is in very poor taste to go against the wishes of the majority of the community, then blame the city attorney and other city administrators as the ones who failed the commission. They didn't fail you. You failed us.
Please let that sink in. You failed us. For all your campaigning about wanting to serve the people and for all the posts about doing things for the community you make on your Facebook page, at the end of the day you proved who your constituency is.
It is apparent Commissioner Tetreau serves her constituency well. It's a pity, however, that it's a constituency of one.
Comments
Post a Comment