Two City Manager Candidates Bow Out, Two Rejected~Oscar Garcia Still in the Running

Oscar Garcia

With tiny Harlingen's new convention center under construction and plans finalized for the new medical school, Brownsville drifts rudderless and idea deficient into the 2020's.  

City Commissioners Gowen, Longoria and newbie Mungia were commissioned last October as a Search Advisory Taskforce to interview candidates discovered and vetted by Ralph Andersen and Associates, a so-called headhunter outfit.

Andersen submitted four finalists recently including McAllen City Manager Roel Rodriguez, Savannah, GA City Manager Roberto Hernandez, former Brownsville Assistant City Manager Ruth Osuna and current Harlingen Assistant City Manager Gabriel Gonzalez.

Rodriquez and Hernandez withdrew their names from consideration.  Osuna and Gonzalez were interviewed but not hired.  According to the Brownsville Herald, the search for a new City Manager starts anew.

A non-finalist and, we're told, the only local to be under serious consideration, was Oscar Garcia, the son of former UTB President Juliet Garcia.  This is not the first time young Oscar's name was submitted for a position for which he was absolutely unqualified.

In 2013 Oscar Garcia was under consideration for Director of the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation, an entity controlling over $5 million annually in tax dollars earmarked for economic development.

Notice a blog comment at the time:

"Marin is behind this corridor also Jim. He owns interest all around the corridor. He is the biggest thief in Brownsville. He is pushing now to make Oscar Garcia Jr. the director at GBIC,..his trusted puppet. The item was tabled in yesterday."

Editor with Robin McCaffrey

In October 2013 Robin McCaffrey of Needham, McCaffrey & Associates, Inc.had been awarded $454,592.08 for a plan specifying where manufacturing, light and heavy industry, etc. can be located in the 22,000 acre industrial corridor including the Port of Brownsville.

After paying for "the plan," then GBIC Director Jason Hilts put out for bids a contract to "implement" the plan.   According to Hilts, the only company responding with a bid was Jacobs Engineering.  Jacobs offered to do the work of implementing the plan for $750,000 with only one other designation.  They wanted Oscar Garcia as Project Manager.  

Who in the hell keeps pushing Oscar Garcia for these positions, first as GBIC Director, then as Project Manager for the industrial corridor and now as City Manager?

Mayor Tony Martinez

We suspect Mayor Tony Martinez, whose puppy love for former UTB President Juliet Garcia, Oscar's mother, fueled Martinez wasting of $3.5 million dollars of taxpayer monies to purchase 14 vacant downtown buildings in 2012 in a poorly-thought-out, desperate plan to keep UTB in Brownsville.

Brownsville continues to suffer from the Juliet-Tony love affair and Tony's obsessive promotion of young Oscar.