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ADVANCE ED CENTER
ZAPATA COUNTY
Chief’s goal is higher ed
Eye on expenditures
David Brown was at Mercy Health Center
Commissioners want unnecessary spending stopped By LORRAINE L. RODRIGUEZ THE ZAPATA TIMES
Commissioners will come down hard on county departments by demanding updates and status reports at the next regular Commissioners Court meeting Monday. They also will direct county departments to cut down on unnecessary spending. Several county projects have been in the works for several
months and Commissioner Jose E. Vela is requesting updates on the Zapata County Museum of History, the Advance Education Center, and the CACST Health Clinic, according to the agenda. “I want to know if we’re going to get the errors corrected in the museum and we’ll also be addressing the outcome of the grant reimbursement we’re pending,” Vela said. “I also want to know what the status is on the
health clinic we purchased to see what we need to do.” The county is expecting a $1 million federal grant reimbursement for the Advance Education Center and purchased the CACST Health Clinic for more than $600,000 last month. With the budget deficit, commissioners are constantly looking for ways to bring in revenue and alleviate the debt. Commissioner Eddie Martinez
has requested that all departments present proposed raises only during the budget process, unless mandatory to the specific departments due to having several requests for pay increases last month. “If a (sheriff’s) sergeant makes captain, I think those are mandatory. Other than that I want everything brought to
See ZAPATA PAGE 9A
By LORRAINE L. RODRIGUEZ THE ZAPATA TIMES
Newly hired Advance Education Center Director David Brown has taken on the responsibility of providing higher education to the underserved and partially rural community of Zapata after a successful stint as development director at Mercy Health Center, where he helped secure funding benefiting the United States and the Mexican border. Brown, a graduate of the University of Texas-Austin and William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn., procured more than $20 million for BROWN public health care projects, economic development industry incentive grants, higher education fundraising, public infrastructure, and service projects along the U.S.Mexico Border, he said. In addition to his studies in William Mitchell, Brown was associate editor of the William Mitchell Law Review and a published law student author on the subject of legal ethics, he said. He also had a hand in raising more than $6 million for public health projects along the U.S.Mexico border, including the first multi-million dollar National Cancer Institute research grant to study cancer disparities among Hispanic and Latino communities, Brown said. Brown supervised the assignment and distribution of approximately $130 million in state funds to public schools, colleges, universities, libraries, and non-profit health care organizations for technology telecommunications connectivity and upgrades as the regional state administrator for South Texas at the Texas Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund Board in Austin. Technology is up Brown designed the first state telemedicine grant initiative in the U.S., to spend approximately $30 million earmarked for public and nonprofit health care facilities and hospitals to deliver direct patient care to underserved and rural communities in Texas via the Internet and high-tech medical peripherals, he said. Also, while helping recent high school graduates and others interested in furthering their educations, Brown is also completing a
See BROWN PAGE 10A
TAMIU facing budget cuts By NICK GEORGIOU THE ZAPATA TIMES
Photos by Danny Zaragoza | The Zapata Times
ABOVE: Zapata Middle School students head towards their second-period classes on Friday morning. BELOW: Students in Michael Guerra’s science class learn about the Periodic Table of Elements through lab activities and experiments Friday morning at Zapata Middle School.
BACK TO CLASSES New middle school welcomes students By LORRAINE L. RODRIGUEZ THE ZAPATA TIMES
Zapata County Independent School District resumed classes Wednesday after a long winter break. Zapata Middle School students, faculty, and staff are especially excited to return to school after the campus received a complete face lift. “All the kids are back but there are still some things that need to be completed,” said Assistant Principal Dahlia Garcia. Teachers moved in during the winter break to prepare their classrooms, Garcia said. “They were really great about fixing up their rooms before school started,” Garcia said. Seven maintenance workers helped with the move in progress, Garcia added. Both the library and the gym are still in the finishing stages. The library was expanded and books are still needed to be shelved, while the floor in the gym is being replaced with wooden flooring, Garcia said.
From faculty buyouts and layoffs to cutting office supplies and travel expenses, public universities in Texas are responding in various ways to state-mandated budget cuts. Officials at Texas A&M University in College Station announced in December that the school would save $15 million by cutting 105 tenured faculty members through buyout agreements, which involve the faculty leaving the university by next fall. The buyouts came on the heels of the Legislative Budget Board asking all state agencies, including Texas universities, for an additional 2.5 percent budget reduction in general revenue for this fiscal year, which ends Aug. 31. That’s in addition to the 5 percent in state funding that state agencies were ordered to return for the 2010 and 2011 biennium. Agencies are also projecting an additional 10 percent cut. That figure may change depending on what happens with the projected state budget shortfall, which has been estimated to be as high as $25 billion.
The gym also includes new bleachers, scoreboards and dressing rooms, Garcia said. “The girls’ dressing room is very nice and private with separate stalls and showers,” Garcia said. Dressing rooms can also now be given to visiting teams, Garcia added. The new middle school campus, formerly the high school before a new high school campus was built several years ago, houses 750 students.
“At this time, since we don’t have specifics, we do not know what, specifically, would be reduced,” a Texas A&M International University official wrote in an e-mail to Laredo Morning Times on Tuesday.
See SCHOOL PAGE 10A
See TAMIU PAGE 9A
At TAMIU