Deputy City Manager Pete Gonzalez convinced the City Commission months ago that Brownsville needed help learning how to generate more sales tax revenue. That is the purpose of Agenda item 15 considered and approved at last night's City Commission meeting:
15. Consideration and ACTION to award a contract for Branding and Marketing Services for the City of Brownsville. (Pete Gonzalez-Deputy City Manager)
Gonzalez explained that bids from 5 firms were evaluated with 3 qualifying for interviews by the evaluation team. It would have been interesting to see what The Tequila Group had in mind, but they did not make the cut. Breeden McCumber, Hahn Communications and the Atkins Group were interviewed with Hahn Communications of Austin winning the bid. We are including, at the bottom of this article, the evaluation scorecard, filled out anonymously by 7 evaluators. Notice how Member #7 tried to swing the contract to the Atkins Group by giving all the other teams scores from the low 20's and 30's while giving Atkins a 95. Perhaps Member #7 should be excluded from future evaluations.
The contract is for $139,980 with $25,000 coming from the Brownsville Economic Development Council, another $25,000 from the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation and the remainder from the general fund. It's all money from the taxpayers, spent to learn how to generate more tax dollars. Pete saved us $10,000 by getting Hahn to lower their fee. Thanks Pete.
The folly of all of this is that generating more revenue is pointless when the Mayor and City Commission are so foolhardy in the use of monies already generated.
Without the Mayor's foolish $3,500,000 spending spree on speculative real estate, his illegal dipping into the Texas AOP Refund check for unneeded office space and other expenditures, no tax increase or increased sales tax revenue is needed.
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| Tax Increase "Needed" Because Mayor Martinez Wasted $2,300,000 on La Casa del Nylon |
Pete may be the only honest man in city government. In light of the fiscal disaster brought upon us by Mayor Tony Martinez (The Mad Realtor), generating more revenue should be a priority. But, please keep new revenue away from Rose (Bicycle Bitch) Gowen and her spendthrift ways. We raised parking downtown....but no one goes downtown and there are no parking meters in other places in town...so little revenue. We don't have UTB anymore and despite the bikes, our kids are fatter than ever now that they get three meals a day at BISD...but no exercise. "How do we get more revenue from the poorest city in Texas"......to begin with the city could enforce the laws we already have and make public service (a way to get out of fines) real public service to benefit the community, not just meaningless busy work. BISD seems to have so much money that people are flocking to run for the school board to get their grubby paws on public money.....obviously too much money going to BISD. The city government nere is a JOKE!
ReplyDeleteOverregulation and ridiculous ordinances are keeping new business from opening in Brownsville.
ReplyDeleteThe mayor was NOT involved in speculative real estate deals. "Speculators take large risks, especially with respect to anticipating future price movements, in the hope of making quick, large gains." from Investopedia.
ReplyDelete1. There was absolutely NO risk taken by the mayor. The money he used did not belong to him and there is no possibility for him to lose money.
2. There is NO chance in hell of making any amount of gain on the real estate, short term or long term, because the price paid is up to three times the current market value and there are no viable circumstances that could increase the value of the real estate now or ever. On the contrary, a reasonable assumption, given the track record of recent closings of businesses in the downtown area, is for the property to FALL in value.
The mayor's actions were speculative, even though I use the phase in a "tongue in cheek" way. What the mayor was actually gambling on is the University of Texas system continuing to be represented downtown. It was a poorly thought out plan as UT has no interest in the dozen or so third tier buildings when they can simply write a check for state of the art facilities anywhere they desire to be represented.
ReplyDeleteI think you are too charitable. It looks more like paying way over market for real estate owned by a friend with other people's money, no? I don't think UT, or anyone else, would have paid 2.3 million for La Casa de Nylon even if you put the medical school downtown, next to the law school....
DeleteSpeculative is a very honest word for those real estate transactions, it is clearly a machined fraud, buying a property for 3 times its value to a friend of yours with other peoples money it is clearly a conspiracy to commit fraud.
ReplyDeleteWhy are we importing companies for branding and marketing our city to teach us how to raise more taxes??? This is pure insanity. If we can't figure the fact that what we need more businesses here that will produce jobs for our community not idiots that are going to suck our money for dog and pony shows. How stupid is our city commission that can't see this as a suck up job for the Atkins Group from Austin. And why didn't Breeden McCumber and their sidekick The Tequila Group get the account. They have been the to go to suck up agency of record for the entire city for so long.
ReplyDeleteTRUTH: LETS PUT IT THIS WAY. THE FIRM THAT "THEY" WANTED DIDN'T GET THE JOB. YOU'RE WELCOME, BROWNSVILLE.
ReplyDelete