CITY OF BROWNSVILLE TAKES TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE GIANT STEP BACK

Josh Mejia 

Executive Director,  BCIC

The BCIC Board, as currently constituted, gives me hope.

Gone are the days when the board would toss five thousand cash at such whimsical projects as Kites and Kayaks or the latest incarnation of Beerfest.

Why would any group selling beer for profit need to be subsidized by Brownsville's overworked taxpayers?

Those dumbass days seem to be history for the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation, a 4B entity responsible for quality of life-oriented economic development projects.

Executive Director Josh Mejia and Board Chair Michael Limas, two young men who can put verbs in their sentences, set a serious tone for this entity entrusted with wise dispersal of a 1/4 cent on the dollar of everything sold in Brownsville, $5,000,000 annually.

Another new twist for the BCIC; no legal advice from the City Attorney or one of his assistants, instead a microphone with the voice of Attorney Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez chiming in on every other agenda point with suggestions for wording or approach, even volunteering one nonlegal comment. 

Two other smart, young people, new City Commissioners Nurith Galonsky and John Cowen, audited the meeting like a college class, each offering a few precious words of encouragement to the board.

I went home and swam in my rv park's pool for an hour, then went back downtown for the City Commission Meeting, not at 4:00 PM as advertised, because I knew an Executive Session would take an hour or two.  I wandered into chambers about 5:15 PM and still ended up waiting an hour and a half for the festivities.

City Manager Noel Bernal

Once the meeting started, City Manager Noel Bernal talked like our previous cop City Manager never could, giving "Part 1" of the city's budget and financial report a "more expansive window."

City administrators have confided in me that they're tiring of Bernal's talks about culture ad nauseum, saying the same things over and over, his hiring of yet another non-citizen Mexican National to head a department.("Can we not find anyone qualified in the United States?" they say.)

Yet, there are tangible things that pass the "eye test" that Bernal is doing, skills that his predecessor was not close to having.

The marathon meeting, with the temp planning lady from Freese and Nichols, Inc. handling everything from wet restaurants to carports, ended in a representative democracy thud.

A dozen or more people there to protest the incongruent renaming of a historic downtown street after a local factory owner, did not get their First Amendment rights.

The agenda point they were poised to vent about, an item to rescind renaming E. Front Street "McNair Family Drive" was not included in the Public Hearings that allow comments, but instead among Items for Individual Consideration that do not.

When three dumbasses, Commissioners Cowen, Tetreau and Munguia voted against the reversal, the disrespected dozen stormed out, some not even understanding what had just happened.

For the time being, we can forget about Brownsville having an historic downtown or a democratic city government.