Director Mariano "Bean" Ayala Clarifies Financial Participation of Brownsville Convention and Visitors Bureau in "State of the City" Event

Marion "Bean" Ayala

 In the preceding article I mentioned that the Brownsville Convention and Visitors

Bureau purchased 10 tickets for $500.00 for the "State of the City" event.  It was mentioned as sort of an afterthought since I hadn't included that figure in the $18,650 worth of taxpayer, ratepayer, tuition generated funds used to support the event.  

At 10:40 AM this morning I received a call from Mariano "Bean" Ayala, the Director of the Convention and Visitors Bureau.  He wanted to clarify the source of the funds used to financially support Mayor Martinez' "State of the City" Event.  "We have a hot fund, that is generated by the hotel and restaurant taxes that support our department," Ayala explained.  "Monies from that fund were not used for this purpose.  In fact, I was worried that someone might assume or report that.  The $500 we spent on the event were generated from another fund, monies generated from the sale of ads in our travel magazine."

When I asked Ayala how the magazine itself was funded, he said that it was funded also by ad monies, not from their "hot fund" from the hotel and restaurant taxes.  "Our intention, of course, is not to make a profit on the magazine, but, in some cases we have some funds left over and it was these funds that were used to support the event."

Of course, of the funds Ayala chose to commit to the "State of the City" event, 47.7% of those funds went to M.A.P., an Austin advertising agency.  That percentage could go higher as Mayor Martinez is still mulling over how to spend the $11,296 profit from the event.  If his first inclination becomes reality, and those funds are used to jumpstart next years event, and if the same agency is hired to run the event, then as much as 70.7% of the funds contributed by the Brownsville Convention and Tourism Bureau and others will end up in the pockets of James Andretes' Austin company.

It could be argued that the $500 contributed by the tourism bureau to Tony's event, could have been used more directly to generate tourism, but this was a discretionary decision by Director Ayala, just as P.U.B. decided to use $8,500 of ratepayer funds, UTB used tuition-generated funds, BCIC used 4B sales tax funds, etc.  It does not seem that any visitors from outside Brownsville stayed in our hotels or used our restaurants during a trip to attend the "State of the City" event, since it is not reflected in individual out-of-town ticket sales.(In plain language, the hotels and restaurants paid for ads in the bureau's travel magazine.  A portion of those funds went to the "State of the City" event.  Since no one stayed in the hotels or ate in the restaurants to attend the event, the restaurants and hotels did not receive the full benefit of those monies.  Some could argue that the catered event actually reduced restaurant sales for that evening.)  The typical Brownsville citizen may have felt shut out of the event by the $50.00 per head cost to attend.  Some might even have considered the event "elitist" since it was primarily attended by the movers and shakers of the city, not the common citizen.  This is all so ironic since M.A.P.(Message, Audience, Presentation, Inc.) presents its skill set as specializing in "communicating with the Hispanic and African-American electorates" adding this comment on its website:  "The biggest challenge in communicating with Hispanics is not one of language only, but one of tone and approach. We have to recognize that those we most need to turnout are more apolitical and at an economic level that can often make politics and voting seem like a luxury."  The opposite reaction seems to have occurred with this event.  Ordinary Brownsville citizens felt it was a luxury they could not afford.

IBC President Fred Rusteberg

Another aspect worthy of note is the self-promotion nature of this event.  In effect it might not be considered an objective look at the city of Brownsville as much as excerpts from the Gospel According to Tony.  It is Mayor Martinez view of matters, even including the unsavory, undemocratic, unaccountable, but totally taxpayer supported "United Brownsville" scam.  Although, Nena and I did not receive an invitation to the event, reports indicated that players closely associated with "United Brownsville" had a prominent role in the affair, as if the entity actually does something for the city except spend the taxpayer's hard earned money without accountability.

Mr. Ayala's clarification gives me an opportunity to address another issue.  In the past Bean has made comments to this blog to respond to an article.  Since I've disabled anonymous comments, requiring one to register or be signed up to Google to comment, comments have been nearly totally stifled.  This blog can still be contacted, however, by email:  rvpark645@hotmail.com