City faces allegations: In regard to public comments, San Juan did the right thing

The news: No more public comments allowed during San Juan City Commission meetings unless they are about something posted on the agenda.

That’s the news that came out of SJ City Commission meeting last month.

On social media, the mayor and commission got accused of shutting down the lines of communication.

That was one allegation.

Then there were the comments about the public’s right to speak about city matters, questioning why those are now being blocked.

That would be true, but when a city basically has the same group of people coming to almost (literally) every city commission meeting to speak about one topic and one topic only — the old San Juan Hotel and legendary Lawman Tom Mayfield — how much time should be spent discussing that?

The city staff has already worked a full day by the time the meetings come around, and the elected officials have as well.

Meaning, why add more time to the staff’s day by talking about the same topic every meeting during the public comments portion?

At three minutes a pop, if five or seven people show up to speak, that’s 21 minutes easy, not counting the time to switch speakers.

This went on for approximately one year.

At one meeting, 16 people rose to speak ... about the hotel and Tom Mayfield.

_{The San Juan Hotel is seen. | ANJ Photo}

20+ Years of Decay
Even though the old San Juan Hotel sat there, two blocks west of downtown, like a homeless building down on her luck, for approximately two decades, with its graffiti-soaked outer walls and busted windows, its interior a wreck, it was only when the city — staff and elected officials — started discussing the building’s future (tear it down), that the UTRGV professor previously profiled in this newspaper showed up with her followers, demanding that the building instead be turned into a museum to focus on how badly Mexican-Americans were once treated in South Texas.

To shore up support, and to stop the city from tearing down the wreck, the professor and her group started passing out flyers, claiming that the SJ Hotel was the site of “many lynchings of Mexican-Americans,” and old lawman Tom Mayfield, who has a historical plaque still standing outside the hotel, making mention of his life spent working in Hidalgo County as a lawman for the good, was, according to the flyer: “…Tom Mayfield who is responsible for the murder & terrorizing of Mexican Americans for decades…” Call it a Civil Rights Museum, that will work, which is what this group wants, led by the female UTRGV prof, but one built on lies and complete fabrications related to actual history.

The $2,000 Check
To call their bluff, The Advance News Journal offered to write out a check for $2,000 to the nonprofit of their choice if the professor and her museum group could offer any proof, evidence, of the hotel lynchings or Mayfield’s alleged criminality toward Mexican-Americans, even though his wife was of Mexican descent, and his best friend was Mexican-American with whom he used to share a breakfast meet.

Still, no takers on the $2K nonprofit donation, but they do, or did, have the time to attend (nearly) every San Juan City Commission meeting and speak about the need to “save the hotel.”

So typical – demands, but no solutions, which is usually built around the need for money. Not easy to come by these days.

One question that comes to mind — is the professor trying to make a name for herself among her academic colleagues and within the academic community, given the fact that she teaches Mexican-American Studies? And this is how she goes about it — making a big deal out of an old decrepit hotel that should have been demolished 20 years ago. Claiming that its bloodsoaked ground was once the site of terrible lynchings?

Since the city commission changed the public-comments rules last week, people in attendance may still speak if they have signed up to speak, but it has to be about something posted on that week’s agenda, which makes all the sense in the world. Or they can go online to leave a complaint, suggestion, etc., about something that’s not on the agenda.

Now, please, City of San Juan, tear down that building. It’s a blight to the downtown area, for both the businesses and the residents who live nearby.

By the way, a lot of those people keeping company with the prof, who used to be able to rise and speak at every meeting, about the same thing ad nauseum, I don’t even think most of them are from SJ or live in the city.

Are they taking a college class?

Last but not least, sure, there was segregation in San Juan as there was in every Valley town and city prior to the, say, 1950s. For example, in 1954, two of the five people who sat on the Pharr City Commission were Hispanic, so things were already starting to change after WWII.

San Juan changed slower than some other cities, though. The bulk of the tax monies went toward shoring up infrastructure on the south side of Bus. 83, the “Anglo part of town,” while the north side, where most Mexican-Americans lived at the time, sat neglected — streetlights, sidewalks, sewer lines, new water lines, streets without potholes, etc.

That all changed for the better, and it didn’t mean that both ethnicities didn’t get along during the days of segregation.

So, yes, there were abuses, but one can’t go about just making up lies, can one?

Inflating the truth, so to speak?