Phoenix Is Ablaze, But It Has Bus Shelters. Brownsville? Uh, No...No Cover For You...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

BROWNSVILLE, Texas | It was last summer that then-Mayor Juan "Trey" Mendez giddily announced the impending arrival of some sorely-needed 30 new bus shelters for city bus routes. Are they out there now, a year later?

Who knows?

Last week, the issue's lone lamenter, local blogger Juan Montoya, posted yet another photo of an old woman waiting for the bus at a stop without shelter from the frying summer heat. Honestly, she looked to be about a half-hour from heat stroke death.

The photograph above shows a woman also suffering the relentless, oppressive, 117-degree heat in desert Phoenix, Arizona, always the National Oven at this time of the year. Only, as you can see, she has some shelter from the sun's killing rays. That's humanitarian, a trait not quite readily available in this luckless bordertown.

Brownsville, Home-Sweet-Home to anywhere between 180,000 and 240,000 residents (internationals from Mexico cloud the actual number), can't seem to get life's little needs right. Bus shelters? I mean, how much does one of those damned things cost?

There are enough city buses and routes to make one believe Olde Brownsville (one of its bus stops shown in photo above) does have an ear for some sort of however-lame mass transportation. Those ears now belong to newly-elected Mayor John Cowen, who apparently is still on some Election Honeymoon, as he has said and done nothing that we could find since ascending to the job.

Harlingen's new dynamic Mayor Norma Sepulveda has given us photo evidence of street repairs, new downtown businesses and generally been pro-active in getting the word out that she's seriously into the job. McAllen's new "walkabout" Mayor Javier Villalobos has been to Mexico mining for business three times of late; this, plus pushing local eateries he seems to favor.

Los Fresnos Mayor Alejandro Flores also keeps busy and front-center on his doings via Facebook. Bakeries, funeral homes, food pantries, you name it. Mayor Flores is into the job.

Brownsville's Cowen seems sedated, perhaps by knowing that a load of his first term still remains and, well, maybe a working philosophy that there's always tomorrow to get things done. Always mañana in Brownsville. 

Summer's heat is not going away anytime soon.

Build those bus shelters, Brownsville.

Do something!!!...

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