EL RRUN RRUN
http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/
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POWERS, BARBOSA, CHIRINOS AND PENA RUNNING AS TICKET
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By <strong>Juan Montoya</strong><br />By now it has become plainly clear that Butch Barbosa, Jose Chirinos, Otis Powers and Minerva Peña are running as a ticket for the board of the Brownsville Independent School District<br />How do we know?<br />Fliers passed out in some neighborhoods in Brownsville under the auspices of SAVEBISD PAC list them as the candidates to vote for.<br />You remember tat PAC. It is the one that is blaming Caty Presas Garcia in quarter-page ads making it seem as if she had been the only one on the board to vote to cut the district's loosses and settle the lawsuits filed by former Superintendent Hector Gonzales and CFO Tony Juarez. In fact, she was one of four trustees who decided that after having spent $2.3 million in defending the district and the former majority whose actions spawned the lawsuits in the first place (Rick Zayas, Ruben Cortez, Joe Colunga and Rolando Aguilar), it was time to cut its losses.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYeQUZU9jh9P7gFBUGWOltqSPy8ykHOn_bYhLc7ruE3qXnggKA6crX4NjbOlRNxF-k4zZaOD83qidolm3dcXoKhU_DqSF7BuIfoRun_76Q-c2lwSDpL4wDSvOZ2S0KPaD33zuIiCmC8EY/s1600/otisforsale.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYeQUZU9jh9P7gFBUGWOltqSPy8ykHOn_bYhLc7ruE3qXnggKA6crX4NjbOlRNxF-k4zZaOD83qidolm3dcXoKhU_DqSF7BuIfoRun_76Q-c2lwSDpL4wDSvOZ2S0KPaD33zuIiCmC8EY/s400/otisforsale.jpg" width="335" /></a>BISD's lawyers counseled the board that if they district lost â€" and it most certainly looked that way â€" BISD's taxpayers would have to pay three or four times as much from its fund balance because the insurance company would not pay for the trustee-defendants' illegal conduct.<br />But this doesn't seem to matter to the people behind the PAC. In fact, we have noted that the person listed as the treasurer (front man) is none other than Joey Garza, a known politiquero in the employ of Erin Hernandez Garcia, daughter of Pct. 2 commissioner Ernie Hernandez and Norma Hernandez, liked with the massive voter fraud during the JP 2-2 runoff election July 31.<br />Citizens Against Voter Abuse have documented countless mail-in and early walk-in votes attributable to him that indicate that he was one of the Hernandez cogs in the concerted effort to harvest the votes of the elderly and mentally-impaired voters hauled in vans to the polls under the nose of county elections officials.<br />Powers' brother Darrell Otis Powers, is the notary who certified the PAC in the first place. The PAC was formed back in March and has targeted Presas-Garcia â€" not because of the Gonzales-Juarez settlement â€" but because she was seen in the company of her opponent Yolanda Begum at some campaign events.<br />That's why the Hernandezes took umbrage with the incumbent. The reason that former trustee Otis Powers has joined the cabal stems from his defeat at her hands in 2008. In fact, he had made it known that he wanted to run against her and would have had his chance of revenge had Presas-Garcia not switched to Place 5 at the last minute and avoided an unpleasant blood fest that Powers wanted.<br />Chirinos â€" whose dismal management of the BISD transportation department resulted in almost $3 million in overtime charges during his tenure there â€" is still smarting from his removal from that gravy train and his easing out of the district after an audit was performed by the district. The report found that he had allowed extravagant purchases of inventory and a run on the district' budget through his overly-generous overtime guidelines.<br />Barbosa is using the Hernandez machine to try to get elected. All of the ads published under SAVEBISD PAC target Presas-Garcia as the boogie man who gave away the store and blame her for approving the settlement and for teachers not getting raises.<br />The ads make no mention that the previous majority (Rick Zayas, Ruben Cortez, Joe Colunga and Rolando Aguilar) raided the district's fund balance to "fix" budget deficits and to cover the huge construction cost overruns and change orders recommended by the Bond Oversight Committe under...you guessed it..Butch Barbosa, its chairman.<br />As far as Minerva Pena, what can we say? That she has aligned herself with the likes of Otis, Butch and Chirinos only goes to show that the woman is more interested in popularity contests that indicate an adolescent fixation that allows her to relive her days as the captain of the Porter Belles pom-pom squad.<br />As head of the technology committee on the board she did not call one meeting of that group as far back as we can remember. She, however, would have us let bygones be bygones and forget about her ineptness and shallowness of intellect.<br />This year's elections place us in a dangerouns position of having a board majority composed of Chirinos, Powers, Pena and perhaps Escobedo. It does not bode well.<br /><br /> <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6016803033174468094-5025751828312367731?l=rrunrrun.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
LINK: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2012/10/powers-barbosa-chirinos-and-pena.html
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AT THE PORT OF BROWNSVILLE: IS DOCK 16 ANOTHER BRIDGE TO NOWHERE?
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<br />By <strong>Juan Montoya</strong><br />Don't look now, but out at the Brownsville Navigation's District (AKA the Golden Ditch) there is another boondoggle in the making.<br />At tomorrow's 5:30 p.m. meeting at the port, commissioners will be asked to approve a request from Port Engineer Ariel Chavez to enter into a Task Order Agreement with HDR-Shiner Moseley Engineering for a Redesign and Bid and Award Agreement for the elusive Cargo Dock 16.<br />A Freedom of Information request by<i> El Rrun-Rrun</i> has revealed that the Port of Brownsville has already doled out more than $2.124 million to the Houston (and Corpus Christi) engineering firm for work on the future Dock 16 and has nothing to show but bare dirt for it.<br />How much this new "task-order" agreement is worth is not specified on the agenda. But if the past history of the firm's fiscal relationship with the port is any indication, it will be a sweet deal for the Houston engineering firm.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5BG-nU_4FVEFXYhqcaZz4ATJfJOvlh22gkaqk_mk6Fomqn0xlpoJqb8caQNJytu5MMzKnMXiBFD0yxMYyrJjUD4neruQ_I9t97CNjTHtmxG8-uQiAeVVU-dDI0fuwluSxNGeic-6AO0o/s1600/PORT_CHIEF2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5BG-nU_4FVEFXYhqcaZz4ATJfJOvlh22gkaqk_mk6Fomqn0xlpoJqb8caQNJytu5MMzKnMXiBFD0yxMYyrJjUD4neruQ_I9t97CNjTHtmxG8-uQiAeVVU-dDI0fuwluSxNGeic-6AO0o/s320/PORT_CHIEF2.jpg" width="320" /></a>Dock 16 has been a project that has been in the making for years. Throughout all that time, the costs for the engineering work had climbed steadily. But unless you know where to look, you will find nothing there but barren real estate at the side of the ship channel.<br />Incidentally, right next to the future Dock 16 is located the finished Dock 15. The engineering work for that project (not construction, mind you) also went to Shiner-Mosely. That time, however, the company was lenient on the port. They only charged $1.32 million for the engineering on that one.<br />Now, one many ask, why is it that engineering studies on the soil, compaction, etc. need to be done again seeing how the site is right next to Dock 15, which the port has already paid for? Isn't that a bit redundant, like paying twice (at double the price, apparently) for the same work?<br />Port commissioners sitting on this board need to ask whether the amounts paid to this company are really justified before they start climbing beyond what is reasonable and fair. And while they're at it, don't local companies exist in the Rio Grande Valley (or Brownsville, for that matter) that are just as capable of performing the same work?<br />We have seen the fine example of this company's work. They, after all, charged the port $97,872 to prepare the application for the TIGER 1 application that was seeking some $60 million from the federal government. The result of that "small" investment? Zilch, nada, nothing.<br />We know that the port administration like CEO Eddie Campirano and some of the commissioners have enjoyed the largess of the company on sumptuous fishing trips at the firm's expense.<br />But shouldn't the port administration and the sitting board also justify the spiraling costs associated with Dock 16 before we end up with the same embarrassing questions they had to answer with the $21 million bridge that never got built?<br />John Reed, Ralph Cowen, Martin Arambula, Carlos Masso, and Tito Lopez, where are you?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6016803033174468094-8687564487002965238?l=rrunrrun.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
LINK: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2012/10/at-port-is-dock-16-another-bridge-to.html
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