By Juan Montoya
He has sat in executive session in City of Brownsville commission meetings where he discussed and then – in open meeting – voted to sell himself properties he bought at public auction resale for delinquent taxes.
The property in question allowed him to add parking spaces to his old law firm building on Van Buren St. which he later sold to the Rio Grande Valley Texas Legal Rural Aid for a nice profit. The RGV TRLA required more parking spaces or else no sale.
Despite him having a personal interest in the item, Mayor Tony Martinez went ahead and voted and then signed himself over the property to nail the sale with the legal aid group.
There was, we later found through an information request, no conflict of interest affidavit filed with the city secretary.Then, later, the estimate on the engineering for the new Brownsville-South Padre Island terminal increased from $27 million to $38 million after the main architect were made to hire local architects at the request of Martinez which altered the initial design and cost.
As a result of Martinez's meddling, the cost went up by $10 million according to James Kirshbaum, the engineer for CH2MHILL, of Englewood, Co., the lead architectural firm.
Kirshbaum first revealed this in a in a change order request to Airport Director Bryant Walker dated Sept. 21 saying that as a result its fees will increase from the original $1,650,000 to $2,500,925, an additional $850,925.
The new additions to the passenger terminal area were added by the city and its local architect, Origo Works, increasing the original size from 65,000 square feet to 85,000 square feet. Also, the Custom and Border Protection asked that the original 14,000 square feet be increased by 9,000 square feet for Federal Inspection Service (FIS) areas to 23,000 square feet.
Those changes, said Kirshbaum, were not in the original engineering specs provided to the company when it submitted its response to the city's Request for Proposals (RFP).
The hiring of Origo Works, an architectural firm associated with Mayor Tony Martinez, were all done at his urging and were done outside the city's procurement process. That firm lists its work at Spanky's Burger and Rincon de la PAz, both owned by Martinez, as examples of their work.
"The other item that has caused additional design and management effort is the coordination with our local architect, Origo Works," wrote James Kirshbaum, the engineer for CH2MHILL."As requested by the mayor, we engaged Origo Works to help incorporate 'local' architectural features and elements into the original design. This effort extended the conceptual design phase of the project by approximately five months, resulting in significant additional efforts by CH2M, Corgan and Origo Works." (Click on graphic at right to enlarge.)
Well, guess what, that letter changed to exclude the reference to Origo Works of the mayor in the records with the city secretary. The copy included on the record omits the paragraph. Who did it and under whose orders?
For the better part of two years, local prosecutors have knows about the two events above. But as someone pointed out, Da Mayor's chummy relationship with Cameron County District attorney may have something to do with the inaction.For example, they pointed you that during his reelection campaign for DA, saenz was hosted at his law office by Trey Martinez, the mayor's son (See graphic above.)
And even more recently, an event hosted by Martinez's at his Lola's Bistro for Matamoros Mayor Jesus "Chuchin" de la Garza, was attended by Saenz's brother Mario. Are these the ties that bind Saenz's hands over the apparent violations by Da Mayor?
With people getting indicted right and left for tampering with government documents at a far lesser cost to the public, why is Martinez immune from prosecution in these two cases?