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| Roy de los Santos with rapidly-aging blogger |
My assumption was that De los Santos eschewed the stage so as to be on level ground with his prospective constituents as Dr. Joe Hinojosa snaked through the large crowd with a roving microphone, imploring the attendees to "ask him a hard one!"
When a typical question about "not raising taxes" was asked, De los Santos surprised by expressing disappointment that the City Commission had recently lowered the tax rate, indicating that with our city's infrastructure and flood control problems, "we need more revenue, not less."
"We know how to how to solve Boca Chica Boulevard's flooding problem, for example, but it will not be a cheap fix," offered De los Santos.
De los Santos responded to questions about dilapidated housing in the city, another concerning the mayor and city commissioners taking all the spots on GBIC, a board designed to oversee $5,000,000 annually in economic development projects and a complaint about the difficulty in starting up a business in Brownsville.
"The city currently has no mechanism for dealing with dilapidated housing and it will take several years to deal with the backlog of unsafe housing in our city's neighborhoods. A board set up to deal with that problem ran out of grant funding and needs to be refunded," stated De los Santos.
With respect to GBIC being populated by city commissioners and the mayor, De los Santos said he knew that was wrong and, that, if he was appointed to serve on GBIC once elected, he would immediately resign and call for his replacement to be taxpayer not holding political office.
De los Santos also made it clear that he fully supports the LTBGQ community and is running for public office as a gay man. This is the first time in my memory for a candidate for public office in Brownsville and Cameron County to openly acknowledge being gay.
While this blogger has learned over the years the folly of endorsing candidates, it appears at least that De los Santos, if elected, possesses the requisite skills and knowledge to actually contribute to city commission meetings, not simply occupy a seat as Joel Munguia, John Villarreal and others have done.
De los Santos faces Jessica Puente Bradshaw in a District 3 runoff.
Early voting runs June 7-14 with Election Day on June 19.
Jim why do you let the candidates BS you without a challenge? The repair of the drainage problem on Boca Chica is nearly complete. It is a state highway and the city is not involved. As soon as they are done with the drainage ditch repair, Boca Chica will be flood free. This was a state DOT project not a city project. When it is done in 2 months will Roy take credit for it? Just because Jessica is hopelessly dangerous to the interests of the people does not mean you give a pass to Roy who either lied to you or demonstrated his lack of knowledge of the problem.
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Jessica Bradshaw is the one you should challenge, Jim. She's an ignorant Trumpite.
ReplyDeleteRoy is much better qualified than Jessica Bradfored.
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