Brownsville's "Untouchable" Patrimonio

Joseph A Zavaletta, Jr.
Brownsville 2020

When was the last time you called a travel agent to book a flight? Or drove to a library to search for something? Or used an online 'shopping cart'?

In his #1 best-selling book The World is Flat (2006) Pulitzer prize-winning author and New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman argues that recent technological advances such as broadband, digitization, VOIP, instant messaging, and videoconferencing have created a seamless integration of individuals, companies, communities, and even nations, to create a "flat" world that has forever changed the way we will live and work.

In this brave new flat world, whatever can be automated, digitized, or outsourced, will be. For example, workers at telephone call centers in Bengalore, India answer calls from Alabama-USA computer owners with a southern drawl to help their callers feel at ease. Our children's education is no longer limited to local school district teachers—-children are now being educated and tutored online by the best educators in the world. And in a few years China will have gone from “designed and manufactured in the USA, sold in China” to “designed in the USA, manufactured in China” to “designed and manufactured in China, sold in the USA.”

The implications of Friedman’s book on the future plans and operations of our local government and education institutions are clearly beyond the scope of this article. But in this new flat world, Friedman notes there are “untouchables” that will always be exempt from outsourcing because they are “anchored” goods and services that fall into three-broad categories: high-end work such as dentists, vocational work such as plumbers, and low-end work such as housekeepers.

In addition to these untouchables, Brownsville has at least three strategic untouchables that cannot be automated, digitized, or outsourced away. These untouchables, based on our geographic location, are natural resources endowed by the Creator and are Brownsville’s patrimonio (inheritance) forever: renewable energy (the sun and wind), international logistics (convergence of trucking, rail, bridge, port, and airport), and bio-diversity (natural vegetation, birds, and butterflies).

These strategic untouchables could form the foundation of a new ASSET-based (rather than a need-based) economy that is robust, sustainable, and relatively impervious to fluctuations in the peso, as well as the vagaries of local and (inter) national politics. If responsibly developed and marketed, these virtually unlimited natural resources could create new jobs and wealth for all residents, including the 40% of our residents who are living below the poverty line. Educational programs in renewable energy, international logistics, and eco-tourism could be created to help develop these resources, as well as focused recruitment and renewable energy incubators (such as the one at UT Austin http://www.cleanenergyincubator.com/). A 2007 white paper by the Austin Technology Incubator at UT Austin’s School of Business, (http://www.ati.utexas.edu/) forecasts the creation of nearly 125,000 new high-wage, renewable energy research, design, and manufacturing jobs in Texas by 2020. Click Here for the Press Release: http://www.utexas.edu/opa/news/2007/06/solar29.html?AddInterest=1286 And Texas is already the national leader in wind energy.

Here's how renewable energy helps everyone: Brownsville-produced renewable energy --> means lower utility bills for tax-funded institutions--> which lowers our taxes --> giving us more spending money during the year --> so we buy more goods and services --> which increase sales tax revenues --> giving City more money to fix and maintain our infrastructure.

What will Brownsville be like in 2020? That depends on whether we can go from a city who has historically had its “hat in its hand” (need-based, dependent on external resources) to a city with its “hat on its head” (asset-based, less dependent) that understands it has much more to offer its residents, the great State of Texas, and the new flat world of Thomas Friedman.

2020 CONCERNS #1 & 2: City Cuts Street Funding in ‘08 Budget

Sidewalks, pet projects, arts money grows
BY EMMA PEREZ-TREVIÑO — The Brownsville Herald, September 22, 2007

Sulema Guerrero Abete commanded attention at last Tuesday’s City Commission meeting, voicing a concern shared by many in the community. “I want to be heard,” she told an attentive commission and complained of a lack of sidewalks in the city and her neighborhood. “It’s a shame,” she said. Abete lives on McDavitt Street and owns property on West Madison Street.

She came to City Hall to speak on behalf of all residents, particularly the elderly that reside on the 12 blocks between East Fronton Street to East Harrison Street, near the federal courthouse. There are poor sidewalks or none at all in this area, she said, few walking trails and debris from the removal of railroad tracks litter the ground amid growing weeds. The streets are uneven and pedestrians must navigate between potholes and brush.

The city will allocate more funds for sidewalks in the new fiscal year budget approved this week. Money for sidewalk construction was upped slightly, from $513,838 to $579,816. “I am pretty sure they can work something out. They can afford it,” Abete said Friday. “What I’m asking for is not out of this world. ... It would benefit everyone. It’s for the city.” Click For Full Story.

Texas Receives "F" in Financial Stability

Our Grade Is In: Texas Receives "F" in Financial Stability

When it comes to our ability to achieve financial success, Texas residents are falling behind the rest of the country, according to a report released today by the national Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED). According to the 2007-2008 Assets and Opportunity Scorecard, Texas was just one of five states that earned an "F" based on poor performance in the following areas: Financial Security, Business Development, Homeownership, Health Care, and Education.

The report finds that Texans have among the nation's lowest rates of household net worth (45th); home ownership (44th overall); and savings (42nd in interest-bearing accounts) and among the highest uninsured rates (49th in employer-sponsored insurance and 51st in low-income children and parents without insurance). Texans are also far more likely to use high-cost lending products (ranking 43rd in subprime loans). Learn more at http://www.cppp.org/research.php?aid=709.



900 Lydia Street | Austin, Texas 78702
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Brownsville Ranks Poorest in the Nation

By Chris Mahon/The Brownsville Herald, August 28, 2007 - 11:46PM

The Census Bureau ranks Brownsville as the most impoverished city in the nation, according to the bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey released on Tuesday. More than 40 percent of the city’s 171,000 residents live below the poverty line, the bureau’s figures show. The bureau’s poverty threshold for an individual is a $10,294 annual income. For a family of four it is $20,614.

Despite the last-place standing, there are slight gains being made in this area. In 2005, the poverty level was 42.6 percent, compared to 40.6 percent in 2006. Median household income in Brownsville, the fourth lowest in the nation, is also inching north — $26,017 last year, compared to $24,207 in 2005. “We’ve got to get people’s attention on this,” said Traci Wickett, president of United Way of Southern Cameron County. Click Here for the Rest of the Story.

Center for Public Policy Priorities on Poverty and Health Data

CPPP on Census' New Income, Poverty, and Health Data

August 28, 2007

CPPP on Census' New Income, Poverty, and Health Data
Poverty Backgrounder
Poverty 101 - Revised

For an economy in its fifth year of recovery, the new Census Bureau figures paint a disappointing picture nationally and in Texas. The poverty rate in Texas is unchanged at 16.3 percent in 2005-06, while median income edged up to $44,922, leaving Texas about where it was when the recession bottomed out in 2001. "Despite five years of economic growth, Texas' poverty rate has stagnated," said Frances Deviney, Senior Research Associate at the Center for Public Policy Priorities. "While it's encouraging that conditions haven't gotten worse, it's discouraging that we still have 3.7 million Texans living in poverty."

Mayor ‘Imagines’ a Different Approach to Master Planning

No fiscal earmark made for ‘Imagine Brownsville!’ in present budget

BY EMMA PEREZ-TREVIÑO — The Brownsville Herald, August 30, 2007 - 12:04AM

A $870,000 contract to develop a “comprehensive master plan” is a luxury our city can’t afford, the mayor said this week while still recognizing the need for planning at a more reasonable cost. Mayor Pat M. Ahumada Jr. said that he supports the plan’s concept, but, “right now, as we speak, we have a (projected) budget deficit.” About 60 percent of the city’s roughly $113 million budget goes to public safety, 13 percent to pay debts, leaving 27 percent for operations and to meet “quality of life” issues, such as new recreation venues. Click Here for the Rest of the Story.

Commission Denies Bonds to VBMC Hospital To Refinance Debt, Renovate and Expand

BY EMMA PEREZ-TREVIÑO The Brownsville Herald September 2, 2007 - 3:10PM

Valley Baptist Medical System felt the push of its peers this week when it was denied permission to secure bond money for improvements to its Brownsville hospital, via city-sanctioned financing. Valley Baptist asked the city to authorize the Brownsville Health Facilities Development Corp., a financing mechanism for nonprofits to expand and improve local health care. Valley Baptist sought to secure $94 million in bonds to refinance debt, renovate and expand the operating room, telemetry and surgical patient units at Valley Baptist Medical Center-Brownsville. Click Here for the Rest of the Story.

Prioritize: Community Groups Can Improve Area by Reducing Demands on Government

EDITORIAL. The Brownsville Herald. September 1, 2007 - 11:17PM

Municipal government works best when the community is involved. Officials’ jobs are made easier when the people make their wants and needs known — assuming, of course, that those officials are responsive to the wishes of those who elected them.

The public forums held this past week as part of “Imagine Brownsville” should give our civic leaders more information on what direction residents want to take when mapping out the city’s future. Such public forums have been held periodically; indeed, a similar effort Brownsville 2020, has been under way for some time, and, in like fashion, collected public comments regarding their needs and wants. Other forums were held when the Brownsville Community Improvement Corp. was established to utilize one-fourth of a cent of the city’s tax revenue for community improvement projects.

Click Here for the Rest of the Story.

I Recommend a Roadmap When Navigating This City

By Rachel Benavidez, Editor, Brownsville Herald. September 1, 2007 - 11:20PM

You said it, Tony. You said Tuesday what a lot of us have been thinking for weeks. A the Aug. 28 City Commission meeting, Commissioner Anthony P. Troiani pointed out that since this commission — including new additions Mayor Pat M. Ahumada Jr. and Troiani — was seated, it has addressed few substantive issues. Instead, it has spent time addressing “special interests,” Troiani pointed out, and was soon cut off in the muddle of other mouths with microphones that sit on the bowed panel each week, interrupting and trampling over each other’s words.

Put seven bulls inside a small room with red curtains, shut the door and cut them loose. The resulting chaos, headbutting, snorting and stomping would give you an idea of how City Commission meetings have been run lately. So it was during one of these little outbursts, and in a mixed tone of frustration and disappointment, that Troiani made his probably unpopular but truthful observation and prompted me to wonder: What has this City Commission actually accomplished? Click Here for the Rest of the Article.

City Leaders Should Seek More ‘Town and Gown’ Pairings

By Joseph A. Zavaletta Jr., Brownsville Herald, September 1, 2007 - 11:21PM

I believe Brownsville’s future hinges on a dynamic collaboration between the city and UTB-TSC that would provide innovative low- or no-cost solutions to our community’s pressing issues. In one of the poorest cities in the nation, the need for this “town and gown” partnership is urgent. Indeed, just this past week Mayor Pat Ahumada, citing budget concerns, signaled the need for a partnership “with the University of Texas at Brownsville-Texas Southmost College to develop the (comprehensive master) plan in exchange for $100,000 in scholarships from the city.”

A town-gown partnership is the ultimate civic engagement project because it strategically aligns city departments and the enormous human and social capital of a university’s faculty, staff, and students to work together to solve our city’s problems. The benefit to the community is low—or no—cost services, the benefit to faculty is scholarship and service for their portfolios, and the benefit to students is experience in solving real-world problems.

The UTB-TSC Center for Civic Engagement (www.civicengagement.com) has been creating innovative community collaborations for the past four years. In 2003, for example, the Center initiated Kids Voting USA-Brownsville (KVB) whose purpose is simple: to give students the opportunity to become informed and responsible adult voters by practicing democracy and citizenship while they are still in school. Since its inception, more than 115,000 students have voted in national, state and local elections, and 25 KVB clubs have been created at various schools around the city.

Brownsville2020 (www.brownsville2020.com) is another example of the Center’s ability to form an innovative partnership, this time with The Brownsville Herald. Click Here for the Rest of the Article.

Joseph A Zavaletta Jr. is the director of the UTB-TSC Center for Civic Engagement, an associate professor, member of the Texas bar, and appointed by Gov. Rick Perry to the OneStar Foundation’s National Service Commission Board of Directors.

BISD By the Numbers

By Aaron Nelson Brownsville Herald August 14, 2007
49,775 to 50,275: The projected enrollment for the 2007-08 school year, based on historical data and enrollment trends. In the 2006-07 school year, BISD hit peak enrollment in November with 48,391 students.

7,030: Number of BISD employees, including 3,166 teachers, 2,229 auxiliary staff, 873 educational aides, 537 professional support staff, 194 campus administrators and 31 central administration staff.

$479 million: The budget approved for the 2007-08 school year, including $263 million for instruction.

No. 51: Ben Brite Elementary opened in 2006, pushing the district just over the 50-campus mark.

$38,000: Salary offered to first-year BISD teachers that hold a bachelor’s degree. Teachers with one year experience are offered $38,500. Teachers with a master’s degree and at least 27 years experience can earn $59,720.

22,000 and 42,000: The number of breakfasts and lunches served daily by Food and Nutrition Services last school year.

27: The number of TEA recognized schools in the district for 2006-07, 10 more than in 2005-06.

2 million: The number of miles BISD school buses traveled last year, transporting more than 27,000 students on regular routes.

18,719: Students in BISD’s bilingual program (39 % of all students)

20,547: BISD students labeled Limited English Proficient (43% of all students)

5,679: BISD students in special education (12% of all students)

45,673: BISD students that come from economically disadvantaged families (95% of all students)

1,439: Migrant students enrolled with the district. (3% of all students)

$135 million: Amount in bond projects committed to build a high school, middle school and three elementary schools. Bond money will also pay for classroom wing additions at Faulk and Stell Middle Schools and Pace High School, a new kitchen at Hanna High School, renovations at Lincoln Park School, a new synthetic turf at Sams Stadium, the repaving of Eagle Drive. Construction projects are expected to break ground in December or January 2008.

Brownsville Herald business editor Aaron Nelsen compiled these figures from BISD information.

Study: Even those above poverty level can’t pay for basic needs

By Elizabeth Pierson Hernandez/The Brownsville Herald

August 30, 2007 - 11:33PM

AUSTIN — Families in the Rio Grande Valley routinely earn less than what they need to buy life’s basic necessities, a report released on Thursday found.

The study from the Center for Public Policy and Priorities, www.cppp.org an Austin-based nonprofit that advocates for working families, studied what it takes to live in 26 metropolitan areas in Texas. Click Here to Read the Study.

It found that in Texas, a family with two parents and two children must earn between $9,000 and $25,000 above the federal poverty level of $20,650 to stay on top of life’s routine bills.

“There’s a big gap between what people are earning and what it really costs to live,” said Frances Deviney, co-author of the study and a senior research associate with CPPP.

The cheapest place to live in Texas is the Brownsville-Harlingen area, requiring $29,982 to make ends meet, the study found. But half of Brownsville households make less than $26,000, leaving many without enough money to live with stability.

The McAllen-Edinburg area is more expensive, about $35,000, primarily because housing is slightly more expensive than in Brownsville, Deviney said. Census data shows the median household income in McAllen is $28,660.

The most expensive area to live is Texas was Fort Worth, costing $45,770 a year, the study found.

Just because it’s cheaper to live in the Valley doesn’t mean it’s easier for those with low incomes, Deviney said.

“When wages correspond to the cost of living, you’re actually no better off,” she said

Preliminary attempts to compare statewide Census data with the study have found that the median incomes, on average, are slightly higher than the salaries the study determined to be necessary, Deviney said.

“Probably over half the families are making what they need, but there’s a good chunk who are not,” she said.

Deviney said the study’s authors used conservative figures. They assumed families would buy food in bulk, buy little meat and never eat out. Housing costs were figured based on the fair market rate of public housing, which is often less than what families pay for apartments.

The authors also assumed families have health insurance on par with those of a state employee, which is often not the case.

The study did not figure that families might want to save for college, a home or retirement. It did not account for unforeseen expenses like a car accident or extra school supplies, Deviney said.

“When you’re living hand to mouth, on a monthly basis, you’re never going to have the opportunity to get ahead,” Deviney said. “You’re kind of on a hamster wheel.”

Becky Sanchez has a good idea of the feel of that wheel. The 36-year-old mother of two from San Juan earns $10 an hour as a teacher’s aide at a charter school. She would like to work full-time, but the school doesn’t have those positions open right now, she said.

To get by, she sometimes relies on help from her mother or her church, she said.

On Thursday the 1992 Buick Sentry she had driven for six years caught fire on U.S. Highway 281. Now she’ll have to think about a car payment in addition to household bills and credit-card debt, she said.

The single mother has no health insurance. Her children, ages 12 and 14, are on Medicaid, which she says “is a blessing.”

“Sometimes I deal one day at a time,” Sanchez said.

Although the Valley has some of the poorest communities in the state, the study found low-income workers statewide face the same problems.

Deviney cited the decline of the real value of wages in recent years, less employer-sponsored health care and regressive tax policies as reasons for the gap between wages and what it takes to live.

To close the gap, the state should increase access to community college, make sure families have government aid until they are self-sufficient and attach economic development aid for companies with workforce training for workers, she said.

A report released Thursday by a group that advocates for middle and low-income Texans found that, to pay for basic living costs, a family with two parents and two children in
Brownsville and Harlingen must earn $29,982.
A family in the McAllen and Edinburg area must earn $34,624.
Source: Center for Public Policy Priorities