I recommend a roadmap when navigating this city

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?

Looking through recent commission agendas, I see little to suggest that the commission’s priorities are well aligned with the people’s.

I realize that a single person’s priorities and perception of reality are difficult enough to influence, much less seven acting as a unified body. What is a crucial issue for some politicos — stray dogs, board appointments and peewee football, for example — might not always be at the top of other people’s lists but become their own mission: impossible.

Before this year’s municipal election, The Brownsville Herald, a partner in Brownsville2020, participated in conducting a community survey and heard from more than 3,000 people about what “matters” to them most.

Candidates, including Troiani, Ahumada, Charlie Atkinson and Ricardo Longoria, addressed the results in interviews and a series of Brownsville2020 public forums leading up to Election Day and each expressed support for action that would target these and other pressing needs.

I’m not saying that the survey results should be a roadmap for elected leaders to follow in order to address the concerns of the people they serve … OK, I guess that is what I’m saying. The point being that here is a list of issues that we, our families and friends and neighbors have said concern us as residents of this city. If you’re having trouble finding a starting point to move forward on the real hot topics in our city — streets, jobs, health care, and education — look here.

Rachel Benavidez is editor of The Brownsville Herald. She can be reached via e-mail at rbenavidez@brownsvilleherald.com or at (956) 982-6610.

Brownsville 2020

Community Survey

Results

1. Quality and condition of streets and highways

2. Increasing traffic congestion

3. Availability of jobs and sufficient wages

4. Affordable utilities (electric, water, sewer, garbage)

5. Crime and unsafe neighborhoods

6. The quality of public school education (K-12)

7. Access to affordable, quality health care

8. Perception of corruption and compadrismo in local government

9. Planning and management of city growth

10. The quality, cost and accessibility of higher education

11. Access and quality of hospital services

12. Prevalence of obesity and diabetes

13. Available assistance to help meet basic needs (food, shelter, clothing)

14. The number of safe and accessible parks and recreation areas

15. Other (including concerns about illegal immigration)