It use to e an urban myth (or was it?) that Brownsville lost Pan American Airways because the airport board of directors way back when refused to elongate the runways because they were leasing the land to some of their friends who were cotton farmers.
While that may or not be true, the fact is that when it comes to economic development and technical and vocational training, past moves by former boards and city officials have placed the city in a catch-up mode with neighboring entities.
Take for example, the recent disengagement between the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation (GBIC) and the Brownsville Economic Development Council (BEDC). After years of contracting its economic development monies to the BEDC and getting scant returns, the new board of the GBIC decided to take matters into its own hands, hire its own director, and direct the efforts to maximize its eco-dev dollars.
The GBIC board terminated the contract with the BEDC after the excesses of its director and its board became too embarrassing to accept. Annual trips to Paris to attend the Paris Air Show, the jaunts of the directors and selected city officials (Mayor Tony Martinez, for example) to the Netherlands and Turkey with nothing to show was bit much for the new guys on the board to swallow. There was even a running joke that local officials who took the jaunt to the east were made also made in China.
Throw in the continuing scandal involving BEDC CEO Jason Hilts and his opening of a satellite office in Colombia which was run by a woman linked romantically to the administrator and trips to Brazil and other South American capitals for no discernible reason the situation finally reached the tipping point.
After years of keeping that office and hiring Colombian nationals to run it, the BEDC had yet to show that it had created one job for a Brownsville resident. Now, after GBIC cut of the three-year, $5.1 million contract to the BEDC, they are nearing the selection and hiring of an executive director. They spend a pretty penny to pay a nationally renown head hunter outfit to find the right person.
Meanwhile, the audit they ordered to find out where the GBIC money paid to BEDC is just about ready and if push comes to shove, lawsuits may be in the offing against the BEDC board.
And the economic development that was supposed to be generated by the BEDC all these years? Well, it's not necessary to enumerate the failures under its belt. Let's just say that the GBIC is starting from scratch to generate development with it's annual $5 million share of city sales tax receipts. Meanwhile, cities like McAllen, Edinburg, even Harlingen, have been at it for the past two or three decades.
Ditto for Texas Southmost College. For two decades after the introduction of a hybrid university-community college creation called a "partnership" by the sycophants of former UTB-TSC president Julieta Garcia and her pliant boards, the original mission of the community college was being lost.
Garcia preferred to think of the "partnership" as a "community university" and set about to push the vocational-technical aspect of the college to the rear of the bus. Tuition was raised to university levels, and the various programs that had provided a leg up to students seeking certification in the trades was given short shrift. Workforce training was given lip service and basically shunned by the reigning academics.
With a graduation rate of 17 percent over six years, less than a 50 percent retaining rate of its students, and student tuition and fees on parity with universities, it was a dismal failure. By the time that a new board took over and separated from the UT System, the college found that one of its most successful programs, the ass. nursing program, was pulled by the state for the dismal level of performance of its students in state tests. Numerous students who had planned for that career were stymied and lost that opportunity.
Now, as the new board which acquired operational independence from the UT System sets about to return TSC to its mission, it finds that other entities dedicated to voc-tech training are running way ahead of it. Like the city, TSC is running catch-up with the likes of TSTC and other technical colleges up the valley.
It is going to take a hard push by the City of Brownsville and TSC to make up lost ground due to the many errors committed by actors of the past. But it has to get done, and it must be done.