Pharr’s state of affairs: Naysayers were wrong?
Approximately two years ago, Aug. 16, 2023, when The Advance did its first interview with Pharr’s newest city manager, Jonathan Flores, this newspaper pointed out that the city had gone through five city managers in as many years.
Two years later, the PSJA North 2000 grad is still on the job. Drama inside city hall? All gone.
“Stable. That’s what this city is now,” Flores said during a recent phone interview.
Not that the city wasn’t stable before his arrival, it’s just that the “five city managers in as many years” thing wasn’t necessarily a good look.
The Pharr City Commission, though, it’s been relatively stable ever since the mayor, Ambrosio “Amos” Hernandez, came on board in 2015. A Pharr native himself and a very gifted pediatric surgeon, according to the other physician on the city commission, Neonatologist Ramiro Caballero, Hernandez was still a political unknown to most people when he first filed to run for mayor 10 years ago, and the odds of him beating the incumbents looked like a long shot at best to most of the local political bookies.
The first story The Advance published about Hernandez appeared in this newspaper Feb. 4, 2015, after he had filed to run for mayor the previous week, Jan. 28th.
“I’m getting into politics for the same reason I got into medicine,” he said at the time, “which is, to help people, help my community. This mayoral race isn’t about me. If I can convey that message to the voters, that I’m concerned about their needs, as opposed, to those of my friends, my compadres, then I think I can win this election.”
Against all odds, he won the race. And as they say, the rest is history.
It wasn’t long after Hernandez got elected that he formed alliances with most of the other city commissioners, helped elect new ones to the commission two years later, and he’s proven to be the city’s leader ever since.
The days of fighting on the city commission, which dated back to at least the early 1980s, when city commission alliances could change at the drop of a hat, and often did throughout the 1990s, disappeared after the 2015 mayoral election.
Hernandez’s early family roots were tough for any kid and probably explains why the 1986 PSJA High grad turned out to be as confident as he seems even today.
From the Feb. 4, 2015, Advance story, when readers were just getting to know the man who would become their new mayor:
“Basically I was raised by my grandmother, who taught me from a young age the real meaning of life — Treat others the way I wanted to be treated.”
City’s Current State
When Jonathan B. Flores, a career cop, former Alton police chief and the city’s assistant city manager, with a doctorate, EdD, to boot, showed up to assume Pharr’s top spot as the city’s new CM two years ago, barbs were still being hurled at the city.
Pharr shouldn’t have gotten into the business of building apartments (Jackson Place), said city critics, the internet (laying fiber optic throughout the city), much less its own ambulance service.
There were other criticisms, but with the job of city manager changing hands so many times, drama inside city hall often overshadowed where the mayor and city commission were headed, the direction they were taking the city.
Over the past two years, though, Flores seems to have changed that.
Even from the get-go, August of 2023, the newest city manager was already on a role:
“There are challenges with all of these things,” said Flores. “But I love a good challenge and to be able to provide leadership to the staff and also to (lead) some of these major projects to the finish line. I’m very excited for that.”
The Advance caught up with him last week and gave him some room to explain Pharr’s current state of stability, as he describes it.
Rather than hammer out a story in narrative fashion, or do an interview, we just let him discuss what’s currently going on in the city in a bullet-point format:
# “So this year our budget, we’re looking at finishing with a $10 million surplus for this current fiscal year.”
# “We recently did our budget workshop for the next fiscal year, and we’re projecting an additional $10.9 million surplus in our cash balance, which translates to $20.9 million in surplus that we would have seen over the two fiscal years since I’ve been here. And that’s a testament to the hard work of our staff members, our administrative team, and our governing body taking a needsversus- want approach and really tightening our belt to make sure that we were able to get to this point.”
# “It’s been a great thing to be able to have that financial flexibility, and I think it’s a great win for our elected officials, because what you see is that the investments that they made in our teampharr. net, in our ambulance services, and all those things that are unique revenue streams for a city, they’re starting to pay dividends.”
# “Our ambulance is currently breaking even, and they’re projected to have a $250,000 surplus in our next budget, which is huge. And when you look at ambulance service, we treat it not as a revenue generator, we treat it as an essential service like police or fire or anything like that. But to see that it is becoming profitable is a huge accomplishment for the City of Pharr.”
# “Additionally, if you look at our internet, it’s only been operating for two years, and we are currently seeing a $1 million surplus. Next year we’re projected to have a $2 million surplus, and that’s just residential. We’re barely starting to scratch the surface and go after our business market. So, we anticipate that there’s going to be continued growth there.”
# With regard to our international bridge, we invested in a new toll system, which is going to also increase efficiency there, and we’ve seen our bridge numbers steadily increasing 6.25 percent. In toll fees, we have collected $21 million.
# “So again, all of our businesses are trending upwards and in a very positive direction, and I know that there was some skepticism there from individuals from the outside world, but this shows that our governing body had the foresight to forecast what this could become.
“Especially during COVID, when other cities were struggling, we were able to have these kind of things in place that were going to create longterm unique revenue streams, but at the same time make sure that our community was connected. And going from one of the worst-connected cities to one of the best-connected cities is just truly a huge accomplishment.”
# “We’ve seen a 3 percent reduction in our crime rate. So from a public safety standpoint, we’re very sound. Our ambulance is able to provide whole blood on the ambulance and do sonograms, and we’ve really invested in technology. Even in our dispatch we have video- to-911 software where the community can call 911 and show the dispatcher exactly what’s happening in real time so that they can get the best emergency response. So just investing in that kind of technology and investing in our community that way has really just set us apart, I think, from other entities.”
# “Our surveys indicate that we have a very happy workforce. We have our telework options, we have a flex schedule that makes it very easy for our employees to want to come work for the City of Pharr.”
# “We’ve seen a reduction in disciplinary issues across the board, and just overall improved employee morale. But I think the big one is from a budgetary standpoint, we have the flexibility with $20.9 million in surplus over two years. We have over 70 capital improvement projects that are happening, and we’re able to take that money and that surplus and reinvest it into these projects that are going to improve the quality of life of our residents here in the City of Pharr.”
# “We’re in a very positive trajectory. I think that it’s a big turnaround. When I started with the city, it had $700,000 in reserves. So in two years, to turn that around to $20.9 million, that’s just a testament to the governing body’s foresight and the things that they did. It’s also a great testament to the city staff with whom I am blessed to work.”
# “We sold the Jackson Place Apartments. We were able to have a successful sale, which translated to a $2 million profit for us. And that’s part of it. So, we were able to sell that property, and we did that last year, and it was a very successful move for us being able to do that.”
# “Then our natatorium (swimming complex), it has been great in the sense that we host the WAC conference (swim meet) every year, and it brings a lot of different individuals from around the country to the City of Pharr and really gives an influx into our area. And not just the City of Pharr, but into our region when all those entities come down here. Then PSJA has some meets here, and it’s been a great resource, not just for our community, but for the region as well.”
# “I think that the big thing for us is we want to tell our story, because it’s a good story to tell. I think there was a lot of negativity, and I think that if you look at the negative press the City of Pharr had prior to my arrival and all those things, when you get to these high executive positions, I think a lot of people made assumptions that that was because of the mayor and the commission.
“But on the contrary, I think if you look at the stability that has been here over the last two years, it tells you that they just didn’t have the right person (in place). And I think that we fit well together, our value systems align, and we’ve been able to have a stabilized city management team now because it’s the right fit, the right personalities, and all meshing well together.
“We’re not all the same. We all have our uniqueness, but we respect each other, and we have a great deal of respect for each other and our roles and responsibilities. And we understand that. That’s why we’ve been able to exist, is because we’re able to put our egos to the side for the betterment of the City of Pharr, because it’s all about the City of Pharr at the end of the day and our community. It’s not about us. And the fact that we’ve been able to do that together over the last two years, and hopefully for the next decade, it’s going to pay dividends, as you can see in just the financial strength, the position that we’re in.
“Over the next 10 years, I’m real excited to see what we can do together if we keep this thing going,” he said.