Garino gets the boot; mayor takes SEAGO post

Last month, Vice Mayor Arturo Garino blasted the mayor for abusing the privilege of using the city-issued vehicle. This month, Mayor Octavio Garcia-Von Borstel booted Garino off the SouthEastern Arizona Government’s Organization.

In an interview, the mayor said it was his prerogative to either serve on the regional planning agency’s executive board himself, or appoint someone from the council as has been the “tradition.”

Effective Tuesday, Oct. 1, Garcia-Von Borstel appointed himself to be on the executive board, City Manager Jaime Fontes on the administrative council and Public Works Director Flavio Gonzales on the transportation board.

Garino said that there is no written city policy regarding the appointment and that he had volunteered on the executive board. “But the (SEAGO) by-laws state that the ‘member entity,’ in this case the city council, picks the representative.”

Attempts to reach SEAGO Executive Director Randy Heiss via e-mail and telephone to explain the nomination process were unsuccessful.

Was the appointments retribution over the vehicle-mileage brouhaha that made the TV evening news? “Absolutely not,” said the mayor.

“I am very upset that Nogales does not have one project” on the SEAGO Transportation Improvement Program (TIP).

Each year, SEAGO receives about $1.5 million in federal highway construction funds for the TIP. These funds are awarded to SEAGO members on a competitive basis, and once the SEAGO executive board approves a project, it is placed on the TIP for funding consideration. While Santa Cruz County and numerous other governments in Arizona garnered spots on the list, Nogales had none.

Garino, who represented the city on the executive board since he was tapped by the late mayor Ignacio J. Barraza in 2007, surfaced the TIP issue this summer during the budget process.

Garino blasted former Community and Economic Development Director Nils Urman and, to a lesser extent, City Engineer Juan Guerra for missing the boat and not submitting project proposals to SEAGO in a timely fashion. He used it as ammunition to gain votes to abolish Urman’s department.

In his defense, Urman told the council at the time that he had only recently learned he was supposed to represent the city at SEAGO.

Referring to Garino, Garcia-Von Borstel said on Friday, “I am not very satisfied with our representative on the SEAGO executive committee. And I am especially not happy that the same person represents the city on the administrative and transportation boards.

“An administrator, such as Mr. Fontes, and someone who has some technical background like Mr. Gonzalez should be on those boards,” the mayor said.

Meantime the political sparring will likely continue. A one-two on tomorrow’s agenda for the city council’s regular meeting is an item calling for setting policy for the use of the mayor’s vehicle and another requesting an audit of the mayor’s credit-card expenses. The items were spurred by Garino, Councilwoman Esther Melendez Lopez and Nubar Hanessian, who have criticized Garcia-Von-Borstel for racking up more than 50,000 miles on his city-owned vehicle in 16 months and questioned expenses on his charge card.

Garcia-Von Borstel, meanwhile, has called for a “full accounting” of the contentious Cinco de Mayo festivities headed up by Lopez-Melendez.

The mayor also approved an item on the agenda requesting an “external agency investigation” into a possible conflict of interest with Garino and the Santa Cruz County School Superintendent’s Office.

The meeting is scheduled at city hall for 6 p.m.