Many of you have said that Brownsville needs to find ways to fix our street problem. Some of you complain about our streets not being clean or traffic lights not being synchronized. But the vast majority of you agree that they need repairs. Let me give you some ideas of how, if elected, I intend to address the problem.
First: We need money. That’s the bottom line. We cannot afford to simultaneously fix all the streets, so we need to be creative.
Second, many of our crew are underpaid and unappreciated. It is extremely important to have a motivated workforce to help our city flow more efficiently.
Third, we need better planning. We are growing! With new people and businesses calling Brownsville their home, we need to better plan for this growth.
One: We can start by strengthening our relationship with state officials. Suppose we leave partisan issues behind and work with them using a common sense approach (no matter what party they represent). In that case, we can focus on tapping into resources that are available to cities across the state — for ex., TXDOT loans and grants that can bring much-needed funds to repair and grow our streets.
Two: We should incentivize city employees by project and the number of repairs they are involved with. We should always look first within the City’s labor force to do the job of fixing our streets and reward them for doing the heavy lifting. Then, whatever work needs to be outsourced, we must ensure that third-party vendor contracts are well-audited.
Three: How do we plan better? We should ask for your help! You know better than any expensive survey or study what needs to be improved. We can develop technology for you to immediately report problems.
