By Juan Montoya
![Image result for baltazar salazar]()
During the last meeting of the board of trustees of the Brownsville Independent School District, general counsel Baltazar Salazar made a pitch for a $36,000 hike in pay claiming that under his watch, external legal fees had dwindled to almost nothing.
In fact, he said, his skill at lowering costs had resulted in $100,000s in savings so that a mere $36,000 was just a fraction of what he had saved the district. He then produced his own documentation for the "savings" he had made the district.
Trustees dutifully gave Salazar a $24,000 raise, $12,000 less than what he had wanted originally. That, he reminded them, was a mere 2.9 percent raise in two years and he will now have to struggle to get by on a pittance, $288,000 a year.
Well, we don't have the figures for 2016 that he showed the trustees, and 2017 is not on the books yet. But we remembers we had acquired
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the legal expenses some time back and went looking for them. Salazar cam on board – appropriately – on April Fools Day 2013. At the time of his hire he told the trustees he was there to trim costs.
He looked at trustee trustee Minerva Peña and said pointedly: "I've known some of you since I was a kid," and said his goal was "not to make money."
He promised he would "tone down your legal expenses" and bring "stability, because you have chaos, and when there's chaos, lawyers make money."
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The school district, he told them, had "become a cash cow" because the district did not follow procedure and said he was there "to serve the board as a whole."
Well, talk, as they say, is cheap, but not in Salazar's case.
The numbers show that for 2014 and 2015, the amounts paid to outside attorneys climbed from $592,198 in 2013, to $745,096 in 2014 and $814, 546.
It would seem from this partial review, that the BISD under Salazar has remained a "cash cow" with Farmer Balty doing some of the milking himself.
During the last meeting of the board of trustees of the Brownsville Independent School District, general counsel Baltazar Salazar made a pitch for a $36,000 hike in pay claiming that under his watch, external legal fees had dwindled to almost nothing.In fact, he said, his skill at lowering costs had resulted in $100,000s in savings so that a mere $36,000 was just a fraction of what he had saved the district. He then produced his own documentation for the "savings" he had made the district.
Trustees dutifully gave Salazar a $24,000 raise, $12,000 less than what he had wanted originally. That, he reminded them, was a mere 2.9 percent raise in two years and he will now have to struggle to get by on a pittance, $288,000 a year.
Well, we don't have the figures for 2016 that he showed the trustees, and 2017 is not on the books yet. But we remembers we had acquired
the legal expenses some time back and went looking for them. Salazar cam on board – appropriately – on April Fools Day 2013. At the time of his hire he told the trustees he was there to trim costs.He looked at trustee trustee Minerva Peña and said pointedly: "I've known some of you since I was a kid," and said his goal was "not to make money."
He promised he would "tone down your legal expenses" and bring "stability, because you have chaos, and when there's chaos, lawyers make money."
The school district, he told them, had "become a cash cow" because the district did not follow procedure and said he was there "to serve the board as a whole."Well, talk, as they say, is cheap, but not in Salazar's case.
The numbers show that for 2014 and 2015, the amounts paid to outside attorneys climbed from $592,198 in 2013, to $745,096 in 2014 and $814, 546.
It would seem from this partial review, that the BISD under Salazar has remained a "cash cow" with Farmer Balty doing some of the milking himself.