You know, this is all well and good. There will be meetings, yakkity-yaks, a few community-minded souls will show, and someone from the city will take notes. And, in about six months or so, maybe a year, some document will come out with a 20-year plan on making Brownsville a better place. But let’s face it, who’s going to pay any attention to it?

Lots of cities do these sorts of things. They’re mostly feel-goods. A mayor and city commissioners will puff their chests out and say, “See, we have a plan.” Y entonces que? Nada, most likely, just same old, same old. Look, it’s easy to be a cynic. The Internet and its blogs and yak-yaks like Chisme tend to be negative at times. But Brownsville and its residents, Chisme believes, don’t care much about something called Imagine Brownsville, with or without exclamation points.

Brownsville has soaring infrastructure issues, a fast-growing city with limited resources which requires the wise use of available dollars. People in Brownsville don’t need to hear fancy words at public forums to know what they want addressed first. Can you dudes at City Hall come up with a comprehensive plan to fix and maintain Brownsville’s streets and roadways? It’s issue #1, 2 and 3, and you city guys have got to know this. There is nothing that would improve the self-image of the locals more than an effective plan of action to improve and maintain Brownsville’s streets.

And, yet, what have we seen in the first weeks of the return of Mayor Pat Ahumada? The constant spats over Ahumada’s lame-brained idea to add $2 or $3 to monthly PUB bills so he can address his animal rights agenda has taken up all of the oxygen at City Hall lately. The idea has been roundly panned, but Mr. Bull-Headed Mayor won’t let it go.

Instead of Imagine Brownsville, how about Imagining A City Government That Will Address The City’s Most Pressing Issues With Effective Action And Planning? That would deserve an exclamation point. Do we really need a bunch of public meetings to hear the locals say what they want most is better streets? Shouldn’t they know that already? 

Post from: The Daily Chisme