City Insider Critical of Assistant City Manager Ruth Osuna's Management Style

Assistant City Manager Ruth Ozuna

An anonymous correspondent is very unhappy with the management within the City of Brownsville and not pleased with my criticism of the City Commission in general, Tony Martinez and Rose Gowen in particular:

"Jim,
You are going after the wrong side.  Brownsville's problems are almost exclusively management problems.  

Ruth Osuna is trying to continue a life on the gravy train of municipal employment.  She is a lifer.  Look at her career.  Most recently she was fired from a city in Arizona.  Fired for poor management decisions.  Yet, she was hired here.  Why?"

The reader includes a photostatic copy of an article from The Eloy Enterprise from Eloy, Arizona dated October 3, 2013.  The article relates that the City Commission of Eloy, by a 4-3 vote, decided not to renew Ruth Osuna's contract with the city that ended December 6, 2013.  So, she was not actually "fired," as the anonymous correspondent claimed, but her contract was not renewed.  The Enterprise article cites a claim by city employees that changes made to vacation and sick leave policy during Osuna's tenure as City Manager were "unlawful."

City Manager Charlie Cabler

The correspondent is also critical of City Manager Charlie Cabler as the letter continues:  
"Look at Mr. Cabler.  Mr Medina took the fall for all the decisions made by Mr. Cabler.  Mr. Medina was a bad manager for sure.  He continued a long term secretary whom he promoted well beyond her ability.   When he was fired(quit); he took a job at a nearby city and hired as his secretary that same secretary."
(The writer also included a copy of a letter from HUD to the city detailing several millions of dollars of mishandled projects by the City of Brownsville.  We will include that letter in a subsequent article.)

The letter continues:  "You are trying to find something wrong often with the only altruistic people who care the most about our City.  If you sit back and look at it, it has always been a City management problem.  The Human Resources department is incompetent beyond belief.  How else would they recommend a most recently fired manager.  Ruth was sent home, forced to take days off, just a few months after she got here for poor decisions, but she has now made it past her 6 month probation period.  Now she can exhale on the municipal gravy train.  Who else is on that?

If you quote some of this, I will keep fresh information coming your way.

Most of the elected officials are doing good by the City.  Rose and the Mayor are individually self-made wealthy people who could be doing better things with their time than to be dealing with this stupid management.  They do it because they really want a better place for the people here.  Not enough of the commissioners are supportive of firing Cabler and the HR director and all the other idiots.  Idiots raised to the level of management, the ones here at least, are afraid to hire good smart people because they make management look bad. That is how they see it.  It is a position of defense. Smart management does not do that.  Really, simply, they are not smart enough, nor well read enough, nor educated enough.  

So, step up if you really care, spread the word."

The letter was unsigned with no return address.  

How do you feel about the writer's observations? Are Rose Gowen and Tony Martinez selfless workers for the public good as the writer infers?  Is the City Commission doing a good job representing the taxpayer's interests?  Should City Manager Charlie Cabler be fired?  

We will publish your thoughts in a subsequent article.