La Voz de Brownsville: In May, It's United Brownsville vs. All of Us

The Citizens of Brownsville are not being served by Mayor Tony Martinez or the City Commission. In his two year tenure, Martinez is not even close to fulfilling his only campaign promise; to enact a new ethics code.(Brownsville currently does not have one in place.)

Actually, Mayor Tony showed that he does not even have a grade school understanding of ethics, when he allowed his law partner, Horacio Barerra, to negotiate the city's purchase of La Casa del Nylon building from his friend, Abraham Galonsky, at an extremely exhorbitant price of $2,300,000.  That transaction would not make it past any ethics code in the country.  

Tony next conned the youthful, naive city commissioners into approving a Certificate of Obligation for this purchase, also including a number of other older buildings in downtown for an additional 1.2 million.  Brownsville taxpayers will be paying off that 3.5 million plus interest for many years.  

How is the unscrupulous mayor getting away with this?  Very simply, he has a city commission

Tony Martinez

majority who will do his bidding come hell or high water.  Let's review the history.  Before ever running for mayor, Martinez financed and ran the successful campaign of Rose Gowen for City Commissioner, At-Large B.  While running for mayor, he partially financed and assisted the campaign of Estela Chavez-Vasquez for City Commissioner, At-Large A.  Both are locks to vote whichever way the Tony Martinez breeze is blowing.  He made a good investment.

John Villarreal

John Villarreal is a sadder story.  John was not financed by Tony, but is intimidated by him.  He allowed Tony to take his first board appointment away from him like taking candy from a baby.  Instead of learning from that initial bullying, John has cowered again and again to the sexagenarian mayor, giving the mayor a free hand to placate his cronies while raping Brownsville.

And who exactly are those cronies?  They hide behind a shadowy unelected entity that sucks hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars from the hardworking taxpayers of Brownsville annually for doing nothing, United Brownsville.  Three of the officers or directors of this scam board stand out like ugly sore thumbs;  IBC President Fred Rusteberg, UTB President Juliet Garcia and Matamoros mulit-millionaire Carlos Marin.  Martinez efforts since mayor have been designed to placate all three.  

With a complicit, bought-and-paid-for city commission majority, Brownsville is sunk.  We must simply bend over and take it.  

That is why local bloggers have spoken out for three flawed, but independent candidates for city commission:  Roberto Uresti, Letty Perez-Garzoria and Martin Sarkis.  All three have eccentricities, flaws and accents, but none are running for president of the United States.  They are running for a unpaid job to provide basic services for the residents of Brownsville and to protect the city's financial, structural and topographical assets.