An Open Letter to our Fractured City Commission


By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon

We don't live in a true democracy. We live in a representative republic. Now, before the over-educated blow a gasket and start calling me an idiot as they have in the past, allow me to explain. Democracy in its purest form means each person has an equal say in implementing rules and policy in their respective community. Imagine, if you will, a city commission with thousands of people sitting on it recommending policy rather than the 7 members who currently sit on the dais at city hall. That isn't practical. Instead the people vote for representatives; trustees who have pledged to represent the people and listen to their wishes. These representatives are supposed to try and fix the issues their constituents want them to fix.

That's how it's supposed to work. You find a candidate whose platform and ideas closely align with yours, and that's who you cast your vote for. Once that candidate is in office, they're supposed to be an advocate for you and listen to your problems. Then they're supposed to help solve them. Do you have a street light out in your neighborhood? Call your elected official if the public works department hasn't gone by to fix it. They're supposed to help get someone out there to fix the light.

Maybe the reason why so few people go to the polls to vote our city officials in is because our politicans don't do what they're supposed to do.

It is hard to cast your vote for someone who aligns with your political beliefs when people running for office don't tell you what those beliefs are. You hardly ever hear what a politicians' platform is. You hardly ever hear what a politician plans to do once they're elected.

I know some people like to riducule Brownsvillians as being stupid and uninformed, but the simple fact is our politicians don't do much to help us be informed. How can the electorate know who to vote for when those asking for our votes don't make an effort to tell us anything of substance?

This past election cycle, we had candidates appear on the ballot who never appeared at a public forum to answer questions from the public. We had a candidate in Yuri Peña who made absolutely no effort whatsoever to raise her public profile. These politicians just throw buzzwords like "transparency" and "accountability" on a billboard and cross their fingers they've paid enough politiqueras or enough people will recognize their last name to darken the oval next to their name on the ballot.

And once these politicians are in office, they quickly forget their allegiance is to the people who elected them to office. They quickly forget they're not in office to promote their own personal agenda.

Our local politicians are so narrow minded, so myopic, they fail to see Brownsville as a whole city with legitimate citywide problems that need fixing. They fail to understand their problems don't begin and end in their district. They don't understand they need to work as a team to solve Brownsville's problems, and that's why things fail to move forward.

Right out of the starting gate, Brownsville has been cursed with two do-nothing commissioners. Joel Munguia and John Cowen. They haven't done much of anything other than warm the seat they occupy at city hall. Cowen's biggest accomplishment is his hand in helping torpedo the deal that would have helped Brownsville land a 1.9 billion dollar steel mill project. Ironically, he's now at the helm of the Greater  Brownsville Incentives Corporation where he's supposedly trying to help bring more industrial business to town. Joel Munguia hasn't done a whole lot of anything to write about.

Nurith Galonsky should probably join the ranks of the do-nothings. She took District 1 by storm, running big guns in the campaign only to end up firing blanks once in office. Not a whole lot has changed in District 1, and I don't see any major improvements coming up from the commissioner.

Rose Gowen has done quite a bit for the city. Unfortunately, the things she's done aren't very high on our list of priorities. She helped spend a whole lot of the city's money in creating a network of hike and bike trails. It would have been nice had she concentrated her efforts in rebuilding Brownsville's crumbling infrastructure rather than planting flowers along a bicycle trail a handful of people use. Not a whole lot of credit should be given for good intentions. The bike trail of good intentions is littered with failure, and that includes Commissioner Gowen's. The only reason she was elected to another term is she was literally the lesser of the evils on the ballot this last time around.

Commissioner Tetreau-Kalifa. Brownsville's celebrity commissioner. Never failing to make sure the spotlight shines on her wherever she goes. The queen of self-promotion. Whether it's bending the city's human resources department to her will, being in the limelight at all the SpaceX functions, or justifying the renaming of Fronton Street by saying the three blocks left on the other side of Palm Boulevard should be enough to keep people who have lived on Fronton their whole lives satisfied, Jessica wants you to know she's the most popular, most beloved commissioner of them all — the only candidate ever to win as a write-in. The entire city commission is just so jealous of her white-hot popularity. How jealous? They proposed an entire city charter proposition putting term limits in place to prevent her from running again. I just hope city hall doesn't come crumbling down when she's forced to vacate her seat once her term expires. Maybe she'll continue to volunteer her time cleaning graffiti off walls in her district once she's out of office.

Commissioner Neece and Mayor Mendez have done decent jobs while in office, but they're clearly in the minority. They've done well sprucing up downtown. They've done well making downtown safer. However, their colleagues have failed to make an effort to help fix Brownsville as a whole.

And there's the problem. City leaders, both the ones who currently sit on the commission and those who are seeking election in the upcoming runoffs, need to realize Brownsville is broken and they need to work together to fix her.

They need to realize effective leadership means being proactive rather than reactive. Many of these issues can be planned for. The perfect evidence is the rainstorms of a few days ago. A large storm front came blowing in, and just like they have since I've been alive, the same streets flooded. And in classic Brownsville fashion, traffic kept on coming. There's no reason why a massive infrastructure overhaul can't be done to improve our city's drainage system. 

Hurricane season is rapidly approaching. It isn't enough to hope and pray a hurricane doesn't hit Brownsville. We need to prepare for the worst. Our resacas and drianage systems should be serviced now. We should look into strengthening our levee system. We should work with the federal and state governments to help clean the Rio Grande and free it of debris. 

We should identify the major issues that plague the city, identify current trends, and try to avoid problems in the future by preparing for them.

We also need our city leaders to address the graft and corruption that's happening all around, particularly on the Public Utilities Board. We need to address problems like the rate hikes to justify the building of a power plant that never got built. Bruciak and his cronies must be investigated.

We need to increase police protection in Brownsville. Given the current state of the Cameron County Sheriff's Department, it would be in our best interest to try and make Brownsville as safe as possible. The national average for cities across the United States is 2.5 police officers per 1000 people. At that rate, Brownsville should have 458 officers (and that's using the conservative number of 183,000 people — there are way more people in Brownsville). The city commission budgets for 247 police officers. We need more. We need a North Brownsville police precinct. We need a Southmost police precinct. We need a police precinct off Ruben Torres and Highway 48. Our proximity to the border should be reason enough to want more police protection.

We also need our city leaders to make sure businesses that want to set up shop in town and receive millions of dollars in tax breaks keep their promises and help grow our city and economy rather than exploit it. We definitely need to hold Elon Musk and SpaceX accountable for the lies they've spun and prevent him from privatizing Boca Chica Beach. We need to stop letting people take advantage of Brownsville and leave us empty handed.

Our city leaders need to do what they were elected to do in the first place. Running for office isn't a vanity exercise. Politicians should care more about their reserved parking space downtown. They should care about moving Brownsville forward and helping her prosper. Brownsville was once the crown jewel of Deep South Texas. We need real leaders who are going to help make that happen again.

If, by chance, any of our city Commissioners are reading this, or if any of the candidates are reading this, you need to put any petty animus aside. You need to put any personal ambition or personal agendas aside. Our city is broken and it is up to you to fix it. You chose to run for office. Do something positive with it.

We are all here on this earth for a very short amount of time. We should do our absolute best to leave things better than the way we found them. 

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