As Oscar Prepares His Presentation, GBIC Reschedules Meeting, Changes Critical Wording of Agenda Item #3

Carlos Marin of Ambiotec, Co-Author of the $900,000
Imagine Brownsville Comprehensive Plan

Developmental planning and the implementation of that planning has become a veritable, but comical money pit for local taxpayer and ratepayer supported entities. This incredible waste of taxpayer monies may have started in 2009 with the Imagine Brownsville Comprehensive Plan costing the City of Brownsville approximately $900,000 with Pat Ahumada, the mayor at the time, estimating city labor involved in formulating the plan may have doubled the actual cost.  Not a single sidewalk was built or palm tree planted based on the costly plan, copies of which now sit on City of Brownsville shelves, dusty, dated and worthless.

Mean Mister Brownsville with Robin McCaffrey in 2013

In 2013, Robin McCaffrey of Needham, McCaffrey and Associates, Inc., who along with Ambiotec's Carlos Marin, created the Imagine Brownsville plan, sold the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation, along with the Port of Brownsville and the Public Utilities Board yet another plan, the Greater Brownsville Infrastructure & Development Plan for $454,592.08.  The actual cost of the plan did not even come up in the GBIC meeting where it was approved.  We only learned the final amount after three weeks pursuing former GBIC board member Ruben Gallegos, Jr.

In yet another attempt to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money, at the June 19, 2014 GBIC Board Meeting, the BEDC's Jason Hilts introduced Agenda Item 8: Discussion an action on the implementation of the small area plan.

Oscar Garcia, Jr., in 2014, After Being Introduced by
Jason Hilts as Jacobs Engineering's Project Engineer

What this turned out to be was a request for another $750,000 plan to "implement" the $454,592 plan purchased a year earlier.  Jacobs Engineering, the winning bidder and, according to Hilts, the only company to respond to the RFQ, Request for Quotation, was kind enough to offer the plan to be financed in three phases.  The GBIC, Port of Brownsville and the Public Utilities Board chose to initially finance Phase I at a cost of $185,000.  Hilts also introduced to the GBIC Board, Oscar Garcia, Jr., a well-known Carlos Marin puppet, as Jacobs Engineering choice as Project Engineer.

In his role as "Project Engineer," young Garcia has been busy trying to get the taxpayers to pay for Phase II of the implementation plan of the development and infrastructure plan for an additional $407,000.  It has been tough sledding for Oscar.  After being turned down by the BEDC, the persistent engineer appeared before the City Commission with his hand out for the $407,000.  Still, no cigar!

Fast forward to the GBIC Board Meeting, originally scheduled for September 18, 2015. The agenda hinted at yet another attempt by young Garcia to finance his "engineering."  Agenda item #3 read:  Presentation:  Small Area Plan-Jacobs Engineering.

Certainly, this presentation would be made by Jacobs Engineering's Project Engineer, Oscar Garcia, Jr.  But, just before time for the meeting, this notice appeared on the GBIC website:

Later, an agenda for the rescheduled meeting appeared on the GBIC website with some subtle changes in the agenda.  

This time, Agenda item #3 is not merely a presentation, but:
Discussion & Action to approve a contract with a master developer for a research, engineering & commercial park.

The vague wording of the original 9/18 agenda may have been the reason for the meeting's postponement.  Actually, the person posting the new 9/21 agenda gives that away with their description of the new posting, not as a changed time, but as "GBIC Agenda changed."(Sometimes, when you copy a file, the file's original title will appear.)  So, even though Jacobs Engineering is not mentioned in the revised wording of the agenda item, we can fully expect this to be another attempt to spend $407,000 of taxpayer dollars on Phase II of the plan to implement a plan.