SURPRISINGLY, BROWNSVILLE VOTERS ELECTED CARLOS ELIZONDO TO GUIDE THE EDUCATION OF STUDENTS FOR THE NEXT FOUR YEARS

 

Former Fire Chief Carlos Elizondo

One personal surprise in the November election was Carlos Elizondo's easy BISD School Board victory over Drue Brown and Philip Cowen.

Elizondo, a personable young man, has had his brushes with the law and countless questionable incidents, including being charged with "unauthorized" ATM withdrawals amounting to thousands of dollars from a Brownsville Fire Department account and other misdeeds, but he's never been convicted.  There were even reports that Elizondo had cheated on his entrance exam, changing his grade from 69-71, but he later referred to the whole thing as a "witch hunt."

My first encounter with Carlos was over a decade ago, introduced by Jorge Lerma and Rigo Bocanegra, de facto leaders within the Brownsville Fire Department.

Back then, Jorge and Rigo were proud of Carlos, a chubby lad working nights in the fire department and taking college courses at UTB during the day.

The story was that then Fire Chief Lenny Perez was giving Elizondo a hard time with tuition reimbursement, something spelled out clearly in the city's contract with the department.

By May of 2016 Elizondo was named Brownsville Fire Chief.

In short order the very men who'd supported Elizondo's climb through the ranks to become Fire Chief, felt betrayed, backstabbed and disrespected, seeing firsthand how easily power corrupts.

As is typical in Brownsville and the valley, Elizondo's hiring was based on compadrismo, not merit.

Eventually, Elizondo was deposed as Fire Chief without pay October 17, 2017 by the city, a decision held up during a 2018 civil service hearing before a 3 member panel headed by retired firefighter Ben Nunez, Sr.

During that civil service hearing and a followup hearing in 2019, Attorney Ricardo Navarro, representing the city, claimed that even after Elizondo's termination, he'd unlawfully accessed a Brownsville Fire Department computer 48 times for emergency response information in attempting to divert emergency calls to a private ambulance service partially owned by Elizondo.

Elizondo was only charged for 11 of the instances of unlawful computer access, but found not guilty, but his tenure as Fire Chief was turbulent and department morale was extremely low.

This is only a partial summation of Elizondo's checkered record, but, no matter, Brownsville voters have deemed him worthy of guiding the education of their children for the next four years.