WILL MAYOR'S GENEROSITY INCLUDE LOW-PAID CITY WORKERS AFTER HE LETS PUB HIKE UTILITY RATES?

By Juan Montoya
With Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez and a majority of the city commission poised to give lucrative real estate deals totalling in the millions of dollars to clients represented by his law partner, a $12,500 gift in cash to the oil-and-gas wealthy UT System to show their "solidarity and commitment" to its plans to build a health center in South Texas, will their generosity extend to the rank-and-file city workers without the protection of collective bargaining?
Try as we might, at first we couldn't find out when these workers last received a pay raise. With reductions in personnel and the wage freeze in place, the workers probably didn't have the time to return our calls.
It wasn't until our post appeared that we got information from the city's Human Resources Department hat these workers got a 3 percent raise two years ago, and that the last one before that was in 2005, seven years ago.
Since then, everything has been going up.
In Item 10 of the city commission meeting agenda, commissioners Ricardo Longoria and John Villarreal are asking the commission to include a  modest 3 percent increase to non-collective bargaining employees (not including firemen, police and paramedics who do work under a collective bargaining contract).
Item 10 reads lists the proposed amendments to the 2013 budget from the (1) General Fund, (2) the Convention & Tourism Fund, (3) the Community Development Fund, (4) the Landfill Tipping Fee Increase Fund, (5) the Airport Fund, (6) the Motor Vehicle Parking System Fund, (7) the Public Transit Fund (8) the Brownsville Golf Center Fund, and (9) the 2008 C.O. Fund.
The amendments proposed by Longoria and Villarreal would add $623,091 to the 2013 budget of $20,769,699 and bring it up to 21,392,790.
In the same meeting, the second reading of the 2013 issue of Certificates of Obligation calls for approval of $13.06 million in Certificates of Obligation.
Foremost among these is the $2.3 million tabbed for the purchase of the Casa del Nylon on 1304 E. Madison and the adjoining building and property next door at 655 E. 14th Street. The $2.3 million price tag for the 52,586 square feet listed on the CO issue amounts to about $44 a foot, an extravagant amount given real estate prices in the surrounding neighborhood.
That sale was negotiated for the seller by none other than the mayor's law partner Horacio Barrera. In that same issue, a monthly rental of land next to the Cueto Building which houses the mayor's city office and the offices of United Brownsville for parking is included at a hefty $2,500. Over the three-year rental agreement, the city will pay a total of $90,000 to rent the land.
Martinez, a member of IBC's Fred Rusteberg and UTB's Juliet Garcia's United Brownsville "team," has staunchly supported the payment of $25,000 annual "gift" to the nonprofit from at least four city-associated corporations and the city, including PUB. That entity gets the same amount from another half-dozen public bodies, including the Port of Brownsville, UTB-TSC, the BISD, etc.
Included in the United Brownsville budget is the director's $78,000 salary plus benefits.
During the PUB-City of Brownsville Special Meeting, the members will in all likelihood approve the utility's proposal to adopt upwards rate hikes that will see city residents pay a 36 percent increase in electric rates over the next three years, a 20 percent increase in water rates over the same period, and a 6 percent hike in waste water costs over two years.
Under the proposed plan before the two bodies, electric rates alone will go up by 14 percent by October 2013 and another 22 percent by October 2016.
The three-percent rate hike for low-paid employees is probably an item that Martinez, who seems to consider himself the Santa Claus of Brownsville with his largess to the UT System, UTB, IBC and just about everyone else, does not want to see on the agenda.
Yet, in item 12 of the same agenda, Hizzoner calls for the city to "donate" $12,500 to the Francisco Cigarroa Scholarship Endowment Fund to get in the good graces of the UT System and encourage them to build their health center. With the spending binge of the UT System under Juliet Garcia, that would probably pay for a top-of-the-line parking space for the Chancellor.
With the mayor and his majority in an apparent giving mood, will their holiday cheer extend to the lowest-paid city employees who keep the city running as Villarreal and Longoria are proposing?