TSC picks election date
Texas Southmost College trustees voted Thursday to hold the regular election for two positions on the board on May 12. Early voting will be April 30 through May 8.
Trustees David Oliveira and Roberto Robles, whose terms expire this year, have said they will not run for re-election.
On Thursday, the board also voted on its Fort Brown Villas I and II properties and heard an audit on eight bond construction projects from Spire Consulting Group.
The audit presentation, for a moment, put some trustees at odds when it appeared to indicate the projects went over budget by more than $40 million and offered suggestions to refine processes in the future.
"What trust can we gain from the community if we go say — God forbid we have to go for another bond issue — if we say we want $20 million?" Trustee Adela Garza said. "What are we going to say? We want $20 million, but you’re going to spend $50 (million). That’s my concern."
The board voted to accept a $39,000 bid for one condo in Villas I from a buyer named John Cook, said Chet Lewis, TSC vice president of finance and administration. He said TSC President Lily Tercero is authorized to move forward with that sale.
Trustees also declared the TSC-owned condos in Villas II "surplus property."
The board also gave Tercero permission to enter into negotiations with bidder Joe De La Fuente for the remaining 21 condos owned by the college in the Villas I complex. Lewis said the Villas I complex contains 88 condos, 22 of which are owned by TSC.
De La Fuente, who was at the meeting, identified himself as a broker with Sun Valley Realtors based out of Brownsville.
The $30,000 audit of bond construction projects prompted a somewhat heated discussion among board members, particularly Oliveira and René Torres. Throughout most of the discussion Tercero remained silent, but she noted at the end the audit report showed procedural changes that should be included when TSC draws up a new policy manual.
Torres pointed out that the audit said they were over budget and took money from other sources available to the University of Texas at Brownsville and TSC partnership. Projects audited included The Arts Center, Oliveira Library renovation and the Recreation, Education and Kinesiology Center.
"We continue to pay for the overcosts and overruns," Torres said. "That’s all I’m saying. I’ve never said the community has to pay more than $68 million. ... I know (Oliveira) uses the word leverage, but it’s not leverage, it’s taking money for somebody else to pay what you couldn’t pay originally."
According to the report, as of November 2009 the bond projects were over budget by almost $42 million. Voters approved a $68 million bond in 2004, initially rejecting a $100 million bond, the report said.
Oliveira said the board at the time, which he was a part of, told taxpayers that in paying the bond their taxes would increase a certain rate and that had remained true. He asked Lewis to verify that statement.
"The $68 million was the geo bond election and that’s the exact amount that taxes went up and they haven’t changed since then," Lewis said.
Oliveira said trustees would not have proposed the bond if they had known the UTB-TSC partnership would end in the next few years with the vote of four new TSC board members. In comments after the meeting, he said he believed the audit was used to "embarrass" the former administration, particularly considering a bond was not likely to come up in the future.
Trustee Juan "Trey" Mendez said he was disappointed the report indicated the only project that came in under budget was for classrooms, to which Oliveira responded the partnership made other bonds available through the university to help the cost.
"That really bothers me because that’s the one place that if we were going to go over budget, we should’ve gone over budget in classrooms," Mendez said.
