2019 District 1 Commissioner Candidates

The District 1 city commissioner seat is one of the four positions on the ballot in the May 4 Brownsville General Municipal Election.

Incumbent Ricardo Longoria Jr., who was first elected in 2003, is seeking re-election. Longoria’s challengers are William Garza, Nurith Galonsky Pizaña and Michael Rodriguez.

Early voting starts today and continues through April 30. Election Day is May 4.

Candidates were asked the following questions: Why are you seeking this position? What qualifications do you have that would help you fulfill the duties of this position? What challenges does the city face and how will you address them? If elected, what will you do to better the city?

Ricardo Longoria, Jr.

Longoria, a Brownsville native, is a schoolteacher and has worked for the Brownsville Independent School District for 23 years.  He has a bachelor’s degree in education from Texas A&M University-Kingsville and owns a DJ business called Rick’s V.J./D.J.

The commissioner said there are still things he has yet to do, and his experience and time in the position is helpful to the city.

“I’ve created momentum over the years,” Longoria said. “I consider myself to be, you know, a member of the city commission but because of my experience, I’m able to be there for fellow city commissioners, for mayors, for employees, especially now that we have new management staff.”

He is also excited about working with new City Manager Noel Bernal.

“I was very excited when we hired our new city manager, you know, I was part of the people that took a chance on him and I see a lot of vision in him,” he said.

Longoria said that not only is his experience a qualification to fulfill the duties of the position but also the fact that he has served on various boards.

“I was a member and the chairman of the [Brownsville Community Improvement Corp.], the 4B. I currently sit on the 4A, on [the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corp.] for economic development, bringing jobs to Brownsville.”

He also served on the Brownsville Beautification Committee and the Audit Committee. He said the city is considering tax increment reinvestment zones.

“While a lot of, a lot of our elected officials have never dealt with it … I’ve dealt with it since I started it in 2003,” Longoria said. “I was able to, you know, inform the commission and tell them, you know, if you’re doing it residential, this is not beneficial to the city. If you want to revive a part of the city that’s dead.”

Longoria said one of the city’s challenges is lack of money and meeting residents’ demands.

“Right now, people are asking for different things,” he said. “They’re not asking for streets and drainage. They want amenities. They want things around the city, you know, that they can see.”

Asked how he would improve the city if elected, Longoria replied educating the workforce.

“Right now, you can say, ‘I’m going to bring jobs to Brownsville,’ but if our people are not prepared for those jobs, you know, we’re not going to do anything,” he said. “It’s taking a look at, you know, educating our community in a positive way and educating them in a way in which we’ll be prepared for the workforce that’s coming in, or for the workforce that’s going to be demanded from in future years to come.”

William Garza

Garza, a Brownsville native, is a former city commissioner, earned an associate degree from Texas Southmost College and works in the hospitality industry.

He said he is seeking election to improve the district.

“I think I can bring in jobs. I think I can bring in infrastructure,” Garza said. “I think I can bring businesses over there because I know how to do that. … I really feel that I can really pick up that area and make it … a front door to the area, to the U.S. and the city.”

The candidate said District 1 is always “forgotten” by the city.

“They care less about Southmost and that area or … the campus here. … So, I want to really lift it up,” Garza said.

He cited Morningside Park as one of the improvements done in the district during his term as city commissioner.

Garza said being a former commissioner is a qualification that would help to fulfill the duties of
the position.

“We need to work together and move Brownsville forward,” Garza said. “…’cause working together can get things done a lot more, you know, and I’m very much into transparency and working with the public.”

He said that as an elected official, he will request an office in the Southmost area “for people to go there with issues they may have or something like that, or even job opportunities.”

Garza cited communicating with the public and permitting as challenges the city faces.

“We need to let them know our status, where we’re at, what we’re doing, what we’re going to do,” he said. “One of the main issues I can mention a little bit of is permitting. I hear that over and over and over from so many different people. … We need to address that. … I would like to see if we can hire someone knowledgeable about that and walk these people through so they can be successful in due time and not keep them hanging on for a long time. Bring in these jobs. Bring in this revenue to the city. That’s one of the main issues that we have today.”

To improve the city, Garza said he would get the public and committees involved.

“Get them involved in subject matters they know about,” he said. “Don’t just put your friend there, or a cousin there. No no no, committees of people that are interested. … I would be a definite advantage to being on the commission. … I think I can do a lot because I would get everyone involved.”

Nurith Galonsky Pizaña

Galonsky, a Brownsville native, graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, a law degree from Southern Methodist University and a master’s of business administration from the University of Texas at Austin. She is involved in her family’s real estate business, according to her Facebook page.

She believes District 1 is ready for
a change.

“What I find kind of sad is that it seems like people are eager to move to other parts of Brownsville as soon as they can afford to,” Galonsky said. “Yet, Southmost has a really unique culture that can’t be found anywhere. … I would like to help create that change that makes people want to stay longer, especially the younger people.”

Being a board member of the Brownsville Public Utilities Board is what Galonsky said qualifies her to fulfill the position’s duties.

“I’ve been on the Brownsville PUB board for 5½ years, which has been an education in and of itself,” she said. “Not only on how to run such a big organization with over 600 employees. They have a budget of over $200 million. And it opened my eyes to utilities, that was something I never knew. … I was also on the board of the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corp. for a year. They have a budget of about $5 million a year. That organization is in charge of economic development for the City of Brownsville. And as a result of those two positions, I’ve been involved in other community organizations that have exposed to me how, exposed me to how different parts of Brownsville work together or not.”

A challenge Galonsky cited that the city faces is the lack of city involvement in trying to develop UTRGV’s Brownsville campus.

“Right now, there is not a lot of city involvement in working with the university to try to develop the Brownsville campus so that students don’t have to go to Edinburg or it’s easier for them to get to Edinburg to take classes,” she said. “Also … we need to make sure that there’s well-paying jobs for students when they graduate so that they want to stay here, because it would be unfortunate if we’re educating people and giving them a really good education but then they’re seeking jobs elsewhere because the pay is better. So, we need to work on attracting industry and better-paying jobs for our future and for our local citizens.”

Galonsky said the city needs to invest more on infrastructure and make sure it’s more equitably distributed across the city.

“As District 1 representative, I would make sure to advocate for District 1,” she said. “It seems that a lot of growth is going up north of the city and so we need to make sure that the older parts of the city, or like Southmost don’t get left behind.”

Michael Rodriguez

Rodriguez, a Brownsville native, is the owner of Ma$ Dinero Income Tax and Alpha Pups Grooming Salon. He has a bachelor’s of business administration degree from legacy institution University of Texas at Brownsville/Texas Southmost College.

The candidate is running because he loves the district and believes it is being left behind.

“I do feel like we are being left behind,” Rodriguez said. “Our voice isn’t heard. We have a lot of concerns and I believe we need, we need a little bit of change.”

He said his main qualification is being a “regular citizen” from the district.

“My main qualifications that I have is being an all-day citizen, regular citizen from there,” Rodriguez said. “Listening to the people from there, living there, having a, owning a business there, you know, living in the heart, deep into the heart of the Southmost area. … As far as budgeting goes, we’ve grown, with my family we’ve grown a business from a few thousands of dollars in sales to going into the millions of sales and growing to five locations. … I know how to deal with budgeting. I know how to deal with personnel, so those things do help me out. I know how to deal with contracts.”

Rodriguez said some challenges the city faces are that the commission does not get along, the workforce is leaving, and making opening businesses easier for residents.

“We should sit down more often in private and really say, ‘OK, we should work things out for the city, not for our own personal gain,’” he said. “We need more things to keep our residents here, our workforce here. We’re exporting a big workforce because we don’t have jobs. … What we need to do is we need to assign case workers. We need to assign people, say you want to open up a business, well what type of business, a restaurant? Well, I have this guy who specializes in opening restaurants. … We got to speed that up. We got to speed up the people who want to invest in Brownsville. We got to make them a priority.”

Asked how he would improve the city, Rodriguez replied that one of his main focuses is to attract businesses to his district.

“How can we do that?” he said. “I want to bring events, do more events for the community. … Of course, there’s, what do we need? We need streets? Let’s pave the streets. That’s a given and I know we have a budget. Let’s put the streets that are, OK, we can do 10 major streets a year. OK, well, I’ll put you for next year and just let the residents know that, you know, what these are, you’re in the works. … Now we need someone else to really come in and speak for the people that don’t have a voice.”

To access the full General Municipal Election ballot, visit cob.us/DocumentCenter/View/7702/Candidate-Names-for-Ballot-.