No action taken on Bumble Bee, Momentum projects

The Greater Brownsville Incentives Committee met Thursday night to consider project Bumble Bee and project Momentum but took no action after a 30 minute executive session.

After the meeting was called to order, the board immediately went into executive session. 

Ramiro Aleman, director of business recruitment, retention and expansion at GBIC, told The Rider before the meeting that the items discussed would not be made public until the committee’s meeting on Oct. 28.

Once the meeting was adjourned, The Rider interviewed John Cowen Jr., Brownsville city commissioner At-Large “A,” to clarify an issue that was discussed in the Brownsville City Commission’s Oct. 5 meeting. 

The issue was brought to light when Mayor Trey Mendez applied for a $200,000 grant from the Brownsville Community Improvement Corp. BIG 2.0 funds for a limited liability corporation owned by him and Ramiro Gonzalez, former city director of government and community affairs.

The Brownsville Herald reported the application was“pulled from BCIC’s Sept. 30 regular meeting agenda before it could be considered for approval.”

Asked why the rule stated that city officials could apply for the grant, Cowen replied, “The way the rules are written right now is that anyone can apply for those grants and I think that’s what [the Ethics Advisory Committee is] going to discuss to see if we need to put elected officials, board members and city employees possibly at a higher standard because we may be too close to the process. And that might be a potential appearance of a conflict of interest, and we are all very aware that that’s an issue that we need to address.”

He said the Ethics Advisory Committee is relatively new and is still sort of “clunky” in terms of how filing complaints works.