By Juan Montoya
We wish we could take credit for the graphic accompanying this note, but we can't.
It was actually part of the Channel 23 KVEO news cast on the new city ordinance drafted by the City of Brownsville in response to the lawsuit by the Texas Attorney General calling the $1 plastic-bag fee illegal.
But take a gander at what the city used the money and you decide whether it was used for what the ordinance said or for pet projects of some of our city commissioners.
How about advertising at $19,910 and the $19,669 for Project Make Brownsville Beautiful? Last time we looked the city hadn't changed much.
Even worse, how about Rose Gowen's pet project, the Project Hike-Bike Trail Master Plan ($130,440)? What does riding bikes have to do with protecting the environment from plastic bags?
How about the contractor-friendly gravy train called the Project Duck Pond at $335,204 of your plastic-bag fee dollars? Why were fees on plastic bags used to make the resaca duck friendly? Isn't parks and rec part of city government functions?
There are several high-dollar items here that are the normal functions of municipal solid-waste management: a $419,101 tub grinder, two street sweepers at $$431,120, a landfill compactor at $772,762, and asphalt recycler at $194,900, a downtown sanitation truck at $152,753, and the repair of the landfill dozer-compactor at $1,259,272.
The AG was right. Once idle city elected officials and territorial bureaucrats see a pile of money, they will find some way to get their hands on it and spend it.