Their Reign Of Power
Breaking News in San Benito: City Manager Fred Sandoval says he will actually move to town after months of denying what voters wanted – we shall see!
ALSO: historic flooding in the Rio Grande Valley and what it means for THEIR REIGN OF POWER!
Their Reign of Power
“They’re not doing anything. They’re not stopping to help. They’re not doing anything,” San Benito resident Julian Rios said.
It was some of the worst flooding seen in over a century down in the Rio Grande Valley.
“They got hit first,” a news anchor said.
Strong winds, lightning, and the non-stop storms that left cars submerged.
Homes invaded by the torrents of water.
Up to 20 inches of rain hit San Benito. The mayor signed a disaster declaration just like he should have.
So why does the time on the mayor’s wristwatch matter? You’ll see.
“This storm contains a lot of ugly weather,” a weatherman stated.
At 7:46 Thursday morning, the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for the residents of San Benito.
Mayor Rick Guerra and the city manager, Fred Sandoval, had summoned reporters to city hall for a rare news conference.
“Good afternoon, guys. I want to thank everyone that’s here today and for braving the inclement weather,” Attorney Michael Pruneda told reporters.
“You would think with all the PR help they are now paying for in the wake of our investigations that they wouldn’t stick their foot in it again, but they did,” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
There wouldn’t be a single other word mentioned about the trouble shaping up on the weather radar or any talk of what the city had done in the days before the storms to repair the ditches, or any message preparing residents for a possible weather emergency.
Instead, the mayor and city manager stood silent as this guy talked.
“Michael Pruneda. I’m the attorney for the San Benito EDC,” Pruneda told reporters.
If you live in San Benito you should know his name—Michael Pruneda. He’s quickly becoming one of the your biggest bills.
His law firm was hired in January 2024, right after Fred Sandoval had become executive director of the San Benito Economic Development Corporation.
We’ve since learned Pruneda was Sandoval’s personal lawyer even after he was hired by the EDC.
A pretty obvious conflict of interest, but hey, this is San Benito.
“Somebody needs to really look into the EDC’s attorney being the city manager’s private attorney,” Rios said.
Get ready San Benito because Pruneda and likely other lawyers are about to cost you a lot more money, potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars more in more lawsuits.
“A few days ago, the city of San Benito, the EDC filed a lawsuit against the Texas Regional Bank,” Pruneda stated.
“Why is the city now suing its own bank? Because it turns out the bank financed a lot of the construction at that controversial Resaca Village shopping center that’s on nine acres of land owned by the EDC,” Dolcefino tells the camera.
“At Texas Regional Bank, we’re proud to share those same principles,” a promotional video said.
And now, like banks are one to do, they are protecting their investment, putting millions of dollars in liens on the property.
The nearly completed shopping center is in limbo, the final building exposed to the elements.
The bank has obviously been watching the city’s conduct.
The city has blocked the completion of the shopping center, halting work eight months ago in a bid to take it over, ignoring warnings that may eventually cost taxpayers millions of dollars.
At least three different judges have told the city they are simply wrong to stop the developers, but San Benito politicians simply haven’t listened.
So a reporter asked the question a lot of taxpayers have been asking too—does San Benito even have the money to spend on all these lawsuits?
“Yes, we do,” answered City Manager Fred Sandoval.
The city manager was all gung ho, but no one elected him.
“Oh yeah, they arrogantly said, ‘yeah, we got the money,’ it’s ridiculous,” Julian Rios said.
Mayor Guerra had obviously been told just to stand there.
“Do I say anything? I was told—” Mayor Rick Guerra said.
“It’s a yes or no question,” Pruneda said to Guerra.
As of last September, there was a little more than six million dollars in the EDC bank account, so the city’s checks wont bounce.
But, why would you want to use economic funds paying lawyers when there are so many other needs in this town?
Obviously after what happened last week, drainage is top of mind.
We asked Julian Rios, one of our friends down in San Benito, to use his cell phone to show us some of the flooding.
“I won’t get too close because this is sewer water and rainwater,” Rios said.
The ditches used to help push water through the Resaca and into the gulf were clearly swollen. Storm sewers were overwhelmed in part because of man-made blockages and poor maintenance.
“This is a big eye opener for the city to fund the departments so that way they can be accessible to the community in the time of need,” said Rios.
This large tree blocking this ditch is a good example.
The water was clearly not receding in some neighborhoods even several hours after the heavy rain stopped, prompting complaints about maintenance
On the city’s Facebook page, they tried to explain the drainage problems, and they allowed comments.
The city often doesn’t.
And then came the complaints from folks about the time and money being spent not on infrastructure improvements, but on entertainment.
Just weeks after hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on the Hog Waddle.
The event got rained out, but luckily the event was insured.
“Should have spent the hog waddle money on water pumps,” said Edward Garcia.
Roxanne Benavides chimed in, “let’s stop spending money on flopped events.”
But, the city appears poised to spend a lot more money on turning the San Benito fairgrounds into a multi-million dollar concert venue.
But, the fairgrounds looked like a lake after the storm. That will have to fixed before any concerts are held.
But in the midst of the town’s historic flooding event, the city took time to celebrate on Facebook a rare legal victory.
A Texas appeals court overturned the ruling of this Cameron County judge, deciding the city did not violate the state’s open meetings law when they snuck a charter change election onto the ballot.
“The ruling shows just how weak the Texas Open Meetings Act is now, but I’m not sure why the city seems so giddy because we busted them violating the city charter, and the judge knew they were playing games, too,” Dolcefino told the camera.
But, it appears the city charter in San Benito may not be worth the paper it is written on.
The charter says the city manager is supposed to live in San Benito, but surveillance shows Fred Sandoval has simply ignored that.
The mayor and city commission have let him get away with it, despite voters clearly saying it’s not OK.
“You can’t manage the city from afar or Pharr, shall I say,” Rios said.
“I love San Benito. I love San Benito, mayor. Don’t forget that. Would y’all like a taco?” Sandoval said.
And the mayor and city commission have been silent on Sandoval’s obvious other problems.
We found court records showing Sandoval was repeatedly sued for his financial mismanagement, even theft.
And he’s giving multiple contracts to his long-time buddies from Pharr.
A recipe for more problems.
But, there is one thing we’ve reported that needs to be corrected.
A Hidalgo County court record told us a Federico Sandoval at the city manager’s address had been charged with assault just days before he got hired in San Benito.
Turns out it wasn’t the city manager as we thought, it was his son.
But, Sandoval Senior is responsible for maintaining the infrastructure in San Benito.
The trauma of the flood exposes some of the town’s challenges as it tries to attract new business.
Luckily, the storms did not produce a fire as these storms often do, but if it had, San Benito might have been exposed once again.
After discovering dozens of San Benito fire hydrants in need of repair in the wake of a fire at this young couple’s house, our investigation prompted a flurry of inspections and repairs.
“They try to cover their asses,” citizen Julio Mata said.
Maybe the politicians in San Benito didn’t expect us to follow up, but we did.
That sudden attention to life safety because of us fizzled quickly.
On March 10th, we asked for all fire hydrant repairs since January 1st—two and a half months.
According to the city’s work orders, in a ten-week period, only one fire hydrant was repaired.
In December, one of the fire hydrants that had pressure problems was this one right in front of City Hall.
It was fixed the same day.
But, the fire hydrant in front of this house on South Bowie Street has been out of service for months.
But, right now our prayers with our friends in San Benito as they recover from this historic flood.
As we monitor the growing frustration with the mayor who doesn’t face reelection until next year, an angry homeowner recorded this video of Mayor Guerra driving around in a truck looking at the flooding.
It didn’t sit well.
“They’re not doing anything productive. You know, people are frustrated because they are driving around pushing wake into their homes,” Rios said.
“We have received 21.5 inches of rain, surpassing the record set in 1912,” Harlingen Mayor Norma Sepulveda said in a press conference.
After other mayors were on social media in the early afternoon signing disaster declarations on the day of the flood, critics were asking where Mayor Guerra was.
And here’s where this gets even weirder: at about 6:00 P.M. on the day of the big flood, the city of San Benito finally issued a press release, saying the mayor had actually signed the disaster declaration earlier than other area mayors at ten in the morning.
They even had a picture of the mayor at a desk signing the declaration.
But within minutes of that post, the mayor’s critics lunged at something they saw in that picture.
It was the mayor’s watch.
It didn’t say 10:00 A.M., it said 3:25 in the afternoon.
“Maybe the mayor’s watch just wasn’t working. It’s possible, but in a town where a lot of people have simply lost faith that the mayor will tell them the truth about all these unanswered questions, it’s beyond time for real answers,” Dolcefino tells the camera.
Keep up with us on social media:
