How Tony Screws the City Over Coming and Going

Tony Martinez

Mayor Tony Martinez does not treat Brownsville's assets as if they were his own.  Tony would likely not lease out Lola's Bake Shop, the property he owns on Palm Boulevard, for nothing.  Yet, if several reports are true, that was EXACTLY what he was pushing the City Commission to do in providing office space for the newly elected Filemon Vela in the Municipal Building.  That alleged one dollar per year lease now will never see the light of day as it came under public scrutiny before it could be rammed down the collective throats of the city commissioners.  Would it surprise anyone if Vela now decides on office space elsewhere, not that he can't afford the market rate $1.40 per square foot insisted on by the City Commission, but that his fledgling service in congress does not need to start out with a brouhaha over office space?

That near incident alone is not the reason Mayor Tony gets an "F" in Asset Management in his presumptuous usurpation of  being the city's purchasing agent in real estate transactions.  In a phrase, when using taxpayer dollars, city money, Tony buys high and sells low.  While essentially wanting to give away city office space for personal political gain, Tony has positioned the city to grossly and needlessly overpay for other properties, seemingly for speculative purposes.

The Casa del Nylon retail store building was recently included in a list of city real estate purchases made or being promoted by Tony that appeared in Juan Montoya's El Rrun Rrun blog.  For those who never took the opportunity to patronize Casa del Nylon, it was one of those musty old retail establishments with never sold merchandise held long enough to be vintage.  Wrangler jeans from the 80's, Ms. PacMan and other games verging on collectible and assorted other items that some day may come back into style, filled the shelves and bins.  There were seldom more than one or two customers in the store, frequently none at all, the kind of operation that only makes money when you sell the building.  Actually, the store's owner hit the lottery when Tony dispatched his law partner Horacio Barrera to "negotiate" a purchase price at a whopping $2,300,000, apparently well OVER market value.


(to be continued)

Courtesy of El Rrun Rrun:

TONY MARTINEZ: SPLURGING PUBLIC BUCKS ON REAL ESTATE DEALS

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