By FRANCISCO E. JIMENEZ
Staff Writer
reporter@sbnewspaper.com
Place 2 San Benito City Commissioner Rene Villafranco is shown (left) along with challenger Gavino Sotelo. (File photos)
Issues hot on the minds of the San Benito City Commission Place 2 candidates include the city budget, infrastructure, and the city’s economic development.
Place 2 incumbent Rene Villafranco, whom Gavino Sotelo is challenging for said post, has only been in office for less than a year, but he hopes to extend his stay for a little longer.
“Being that I’ve only been there eight months, I still have my platform that I continue to work on,” Villafranco said. “We’re in rough economic times, and getting the job across will be a slow pace, but I will work on my goals and with the rest of the commission to accomplish them, which includes the downtown renovation, economic growth, budget improvements, parks renovations, street repairs, and infrastructure. We can’t lose sight of them even though we’re going through tough times.”
Villafranco faces Sotelo, who holds an extensive resume which includes being the first assistant city manager in cities such as Dallas, Lubbock, Kingsville, Odessa as well as the city manager for Harlingen.
“I would like to have San Benito be the place where people are proud to raise their families,” Sotelo said. “You do that by providing a safe, secure, and prosperous community. You clean up your city, have the people have pride in their neighborhoods, have pride in their city, and focus on that.”
When asked about how he would have handled last year’s multi-million dollar budget shortfall, which prompted city officials to tighten its belt and cut from all departments, Sotelo said, “I have prepared budgets and managed budgets ranging from $3 million to $1.3 billion, and they’re always difficult, even when you have the resources. But, if you don’t have the resources, then you’ve got to reduce the expenditures, obviously. It’s very simple, not simple to do, but the solutions are always there.”
Villafranco said that handling the budget shortfall helped him gain experience dealing with matters of such significance.
“We hit the ground running when we came in,” Villafranco said of he and Pl. 1 City Commissioner Antonio “Tony” Gonzalez, both of whom were elected last summer and then were immediately thrown into budget workshops in which the goal was to find avenues to cut millions of dollars to continue the city’s basic operations. “Everyone knew we were in a budget crisis, but we worked with the commissioners, city manager, and consultant,” said Villafranco. “It was a good experience in the sense that as a commissioner, it’s one of the first things you wanted to know was the budget. This is how city government runs.”
Both Villafranco and Sotelo shared their opinions of the current city commission and its performance.
“I’m pretty much happy with what I’ve done, with how we’ve been guided through the consultants, working together with commissioners on how we work together to accomplish good for the city,” said Villafranco. “I work well with them, and I think we have a great professional relationship as far as working together.”
“I think everybody struggles to do the right thing,” said Sotelo. “Everybody wants to do what’s good for San Benito; however, what I would like to do is have a planning process where you plan for your future, where you plan to be in the next five, 10, or 20 years. You do that by listening to your community. It’s a difficult task, it’s not easy, but we’ve got to turn to the community and let the people speak to us about what they’d like us to do.”
Early voting will be held from May 2-10; Election Day is scheduled for May 14.
To see this story in print, pick up a copy of the April 10 edition of the San Benito News.
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