"DE JA VU ALL OVER AGAIN" WITH GBIC AND MASTER PLANS

Brownsville Observer Editor with Robin McCaffrey of

Needham-McCaffrey & Associates in 2013

Much like a Stripes parking lot covered with worthless lottery tickets, Brownsville has been littered with the debris of extraordinarily expensive surveys, master plans, industrial corridor plans, etc., paid for by the city's hardworking taxpayers, but never implemented.

Many still recall the 2009 Imagine Brownsville Comprehensive Plan, purchased at a cost of $900,000, utilizing over $1,000,000 in city labor, now gathering dust on city shelves, never implemented.

Then came the 2013 plan for the Port of Brownsville and the industrial corridor sold to the city by Robin McCaffrey of Needham, McCaffrey & Associates at a cost of $454,592.08.

Here is what we wrote at the time about that plan:

"Robin McCaffrey of Needham-McCaffrey & Associates, Inc. moderated the third leg of a slide show presentation to the GBIC on October 31, outlining an overall plan for a 22,000 acre industrial corridor including the Port of Brownsville. Earlier, the Port of Brownsville and Public Utilities Board heard the same proposal.

"The plan organizes the Port of Brownsville and the surrounding area south of the port and east of the Brownsville/South Padre Island Airport. Specific areas are segmented for heavy industry, light industry and organized according to power and water usage. Simply lining up industry along the ship channel is discouraged, but companies with similar energy and/or infrastructure needs are organized perpendicular to the channel."

A couple years later, GBIC actually rejected a $180,000 addendum to the industrial corridor plan to fine tune it, when Jacobs Engineering was the "only" firm to respond to the RFP and insisted that the inexperienced Oscar Garcia, Jr. be assigned as Project Manager.

So, please understand our skepticism when, at last night's GBIC Board meeting, yet another "master plan" for the industrial corridor was proposed.

Brownsville has been there, done that and has the cancelled checks to show for it and nothing else.