Dust still settling from Pharr race

By G. Romero Wendorf

PHARR – Clear the bunkers. This hard-fought, bitter election is finally over. Even though the dust still hasn’t totally settled after this year’s mayoral and city commissioners race finally came to a conclusion Saturday, some calm has once again returned to the city. Incoming Mayor Dr. Ambrosio “Amos” Hernandez sat down with The Advance earlier this week to lay out his agenda. As most people already know, he won against Adan Farias, along with two of his three slate mates – Ricardo Medina beat A. Jimmy Garza and Eleazar Guajardo beat Art Cortez. But Hernandez’s slate, Pharr Forward, failed in its bid for a majority vote by coming up one vote shy of Pharr First: Mario Bracamontes beat out Ramiro Caballero. The question remains: where does the city commission go from here? Bitter bickering in executive session, a la circa earlyto mid-2000s? Never agreeing to disagree? Trading barbs back and forth in heated confrontation? Great for political theater. Bad for city business. Or does the commission come together as gentlemen, shake hands, let bygones be bygones and let the city move forward? Agree to disagree based solely on the merits of the issues before the commission? For his part, once the votes are officially recorded (canvassed) next week and the new city officials sworn into office, Hernandez said he’s not coming into city hall with any sort of head-hunting agenda in mind. “Absolutely not.” No matter that some city staff openly campaigned for Pharr First. Although they all claimed it was on their own personal time. “We’re going to audit that and make sure of that,” Hernandez said. But what he does hope to do, in his own words, is bring more transparency and openness to the city. “There are consultants right now making $1,500 per month for what?” he asked. “What I would like to see are some minutes, their records, what have they done for the city? What meetings have they attended? Who have they talked to? All the consultants, from $1,500 per month on up.” According to Hernandez, it’s bad for employee morale to see a consultant making $18,000 a year or more, without having to explain to the commission what it is they’re exactly doing each month. “What I’d like to see is the city strive for demanding performance on the part of the people, the vendors, we’re paying for city services. And if they’re not performing, bring in someone else.” As it stands now, Hernandez said he hopes to work with the entire commission. “I truly hope we can work together for the betterment of the city and of the taxpayers.” And if he can’t get a majority vote, even it’s for something he believes is in the best interests of the taxpayers, then he said he’ll simply lay it out for the public, so they’ll be fully informed when the next election rolls around in 2017. But he said he wants a full audit of city staff and city consultants and city vendors. And he said, too, he still believes that the city can lower the property taxes and utility rates. “Use the increased sales tax monies for that instead of giving so much money away to attract investors to the city. I’m in favor of the city giving them incentive money to attract them here as long as they pay workers a minimum of $11 an hour and give preferential treatment to Pharr residents. Pay them all the same. But if you live in Pharr, you get a bump up over the guy living in the neighboring city when it comes to who gets hired. Or, if the city doesn’t decide to give the money to an investor to attract a new business to Pharr, give the money instead to a Pharr non-profit organization for the betterment of the community.” On the other side of town, the man who lost to Hernandez, Adan Farias, isn’t holding back in his view of the man or the partial slate who beat him. “Their whole campaign was built on lies, deceit and money. And they had an army of workers, especially in south Pharr,” he said. It was assumed that Farias would follow outgoing mayor “Polo” Palacios into office. But the two men split – there are still disagreements between the two men as to why – and Palacios threw his political weight behind Hernandez and Pharr Forward. And the rest is history. “We just deal with it and move on,” Farias said. “I think that they just basically had a big army out there pulling people out. We’re getting calls about people getting paid for their votes. So I don’t know what’s going to happen to that.” For his part, Hernandez maintains that his team, Pharr Forward, always held itself to the highest ethical standards during the campaign. “I really don’t want to even respond to that bitter-driven commentary,” he said. Farias denies he’s left bitter about the race. Both he, Art Cortez and Jimmy Garza, have said they’re proud that they left the city of Pharr in such great shape since they first came into office (Farias and Cortez in 2006, and Garza in ’10). “In essence, we kind of feel like a big burden has come off our shoulders. It’s time to move on and not concentrate on the past. It’s the future we’re concerned about, especially for the staff. It’s a bad situation. Just try to get over this stuff and get our lives back together and move forward. I just want to thank, too, all of our supporters and volunteers.”