New city leader to be sworn in

By BRITTNEY BOOTH

The Brownsville Herald

Carlos Cisneros will officially become the Place 5 city commissioner when he

is sworn in at todays City Commission meeting.

Cisneros, a 33-year-old office manager of Border Anesthesia P.C., will take

the oath of office shortly after 6 p.m. in the city commission chambers at

Market Square. Cisneros assumes the term Ernesto De Leon vacated in January.

The term will be up for re-election in May 2003.

De Leon stepped down from the commission to launch his unsuccessful run for

the Democratic nomination for state agriculture commissioner.

Cisneros received about 58 percent of the votes at Saturdays special runoff

election against opponent Joe De La Garza. The men obtained the two highest

percentages of votes in the May 4 election that eliminated two other

candidates.

De La Garza, a 29-year-old Planned Parenthood director of development and

public affairs, garnered more votes than Cisneros in the first round. His

campaign treasurer, Ernie Gonzalez, said the De La Garza camp had fully

recovered from Saturdays defeat and said De La Garza is considering seeking

public office again in the future.

As soon as Joey found out, he immediately contacted him (Cisneros) and

congratulated him, Gonzalez said. An election is a competition of different

sets of values. If you go into any election you need to be prepared to lose as

well as win.

Ultimately its the people that decided to vote that spoke and although we

didnt like the outcome, we liked the opportunity to be on the ballot. Theres

always next time.

The election drew fewer than 3,000 voters about 5 percent of the citys

registered voters. Gonzalez noted that because Saturdays election was the

fourth to be held in Brownsville since January, the city might have been

dealing with voter apathy.

He also noted out that with only two candidates on the ballot, and the onset

of summer vacation season, we felt that impacted the election bad timing.

In other matters, the city commissions agenda for today lists an executive

session with discussion regarding the employment of Airport Director Daniel

T. Weber, set for 5:30 p.m. Commissioner Henry Gonzalez requested the

closed-door session.