"The multi-year rate plan will support growth (and)...the bond issue will take care of our future needs (for the next five years out into October 2016....The rate increases will take care of our future needs and provide low-energy costs to the residents of Brownsville." Brownsville Public Utility Board CEO John Bruciak at a joint meeting of the commission on and PUB board Dec. 11, 2012.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prHSfdbSY9Q&list=PL_ffKf9NIs6llN3aBO35t9iibSjz9qkRG&index=2
“Tenaska and its affiliates have expertise in the Texas energy market, including owning and operating power plants and marketing electricity,” said BPUB General Manager and CEO John Bruciak, P.E. “That expertise will provide significant value to BPUB in the Tenaska Brownsville Generating Station.” Bruciak, January 28, 2013.
At the Dec. 11, 2012 meeting, the commission voted to increase the rates for the next five years to fund the $550 million Tenaska gas-fueled, electricity generating plant that has never gotten built. Then-Mayor Tony Martinez called the plan "terrific" and congratulated the PUB administration and its consultants for their "great" work.
"You can say whatever you want about John Bruciak and those guys," the mayor later asserted, "but they do a great job." Martinez, April 10, 2019
Starting January of 2013 – a month after Bruciaks' push – until today, PUB ratepayers are paying for these increases:
ELECTRIC RATES: 36 PERCENT
WATER: 20 PERCENT
WASTE WATER: 6 PERCENT
Since then, utility rates have not been the only thing going up. So have the salaries of the top three PUB executives for the "terrific" job they've done, starting with Bruciak's. Some city officials estimate that some $150 million in cash has been collected by PUB through the rate hikes.
Since 2013, when PUB unloaded the rate increases on its ratepayers, subsequent PUB boards have approved increases to their salaries. Are these merit raises based on performance for doing a "terrific" job? If they are, they should have been demotions, not these obscene increases. Compare.
went from
$184,059.20 to $303,576, an increase of $119,517, or 39.37 percent.
.
Asst. GM and COO Fernando Saenz, who commutes from Austin weekly, went from:
$160,014.40 to $273,603.20, an increase of $113,598, or 41.5 percent.
CFO Leonardo Garcia has gone from:
$160,014 to $263,286, an increase of $103,271, or 39.2 percent.
How long will the PUB board and the city commission put up with these proven overpaid underachievers who are rolling in the dough at the expense of the suffering Brownsville PUB ratepayers? Just who do these elected officials represent?