Job No. 2368089
1 2 3 4 5 6 BORDER TRADE ADVISORY COMMITTEE 7 8 9 10 UTEP CAMPUS, UNION BUILDING EAST 11 3RD FLOOR, ROOM 308 12 UTEP - TOMAS RIVERA CENTER 13 EL PASO, TEXAS 75205 1 4 1 5 1 6 17 SEPTEMBER 7, 2016 1 8 1 9 2 0 21 Reported by Ruth Aguilar, CSR, RPR 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5
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1 COMMITTEE MEMBER APPEARANCE 2 SOS Carlos H. Cascos, Chair 3 Caroline Mays 4 Rafael Aldrete 5 Gabriel Gonzalez 6 Andrew Cannon 7 Paul Cristina 8 Ed Drusina 9 Veronica Escobar 10 Josue Garcia 11 Cynthia Garza-Reyes 12 Jake Giesbrecht 13 Lisa Loftus-Orway 14 Oscar Leeser 15 John B. Love, III 16 Brenda Mainwaring 17 Matthew McElroy 18 Julie Ramirez 19 Ramsey English Cantu 20 Pete Saenz 21 Gerry Schwebel 22 Tommy Taylor 23 Sam Vale 24 Juan Olaguibel 2 5
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1 MR. CASCOS: Good morning. I'm glad
2 everybody made it well. It's great to be in El Paso
3 again. I love coming to the city not just because the
4 mayor and the judge are here, but this is like my fourth
5 or fifth time I've been here and I'm going to be back
6 again in a couple of weeks and then I think Mr. Drusina is
7 telling me like we're trying to schedule or is scheduled
8 for another meeting in November to come back.
9 MR. DRUSINA: All right.
10 MR. CASCOS: Okay. That's great. I can't
11 get used to the time change, but I like it. Get up at
12 4:00 in the morning. Let's -- let's get going. It's
13 great. Thank you very much.
14 Before we get started, I do want to
15 introduce a few new members that we have. I'm just trying
16 to get the -- I know one of them. I know two of them.
17 First of all let me introduce
18 Cynthia Garza-Reyes with the Pharr Economic
19 Development Corporation. This is her first official
20 meeting. She's been participating in the past by -- by
21 attending and after I saw that she was always trying to
22 ask a question and no one acknowledged her, I decided to
23 put her on the team.
24 And, Cynthia, welcome. And it's glad to
25 have you here and when we go around, introduce yourself if
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1 you will say a little bit about yourself quickly.
2 And then Bret Erickson. Where's Bret? He's
3 not here?
4 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Speaking sotto
5 voce.)
6 MR. CASCOS: Okay. All right. Well, Bret
7 is a new member. He's with the International Produce
8 Association. And when we started this, we -- we figured
9 that it'd be good to have somebody from the produce arena
10 since we are doing a lot of produce crossings.
11 And then the last member is -- I just met
12 him -- Tommy Taylor from Fasken Oil and Ranch Limited.
13 And, Tommy -- I just saw him early on when
14 we were walking over here -- good to have you.
15 MR. TAYLOR: Thank you.
16 MR. CASCOS: Thank you for joining us and
17 thank you for taking the time.
18 You know for now just a couple of
19 housekeeping things. One is make sure that your cell
20 phones are on -- on vibrate or mute.
21 Secondly, is as you introduce yourselves for
22 the record, just so we know that you're here, make sure
23 that you speak clearly into the microphone. As we engage
24 during the day and you have a question or commentary, I
25 know everybody knows who you are, but people that are --
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1 that are listening to this may not recognize the voice so
2 always introduce yourself and state your name before you
3 ask a question or you make a comment. Even when you take
4 a vote on something, make sure that -- that you introduce
5 yourselves. All right?
6 Okay. Did everybody sign in? We have a
7 sign-in sheet. Did everybody sign in, please? Copy of
8 that so we can --
9 It gives me great pleasure to introduce the
10 honorable mayor of El Paso. I've know- -- I've gotten to
11 know him since I've become Secretary, Oscar Lesser and/or
12 Leeser (different pronunciation). And is it Lesser or
13 Leeser (different pronunciation)?
14 MR. LEESER: Leeser.
15 MR. CASCOS: It's Leeser? Because you're
16 not the Lesser. We get to know each other better. He's
17 been a great -- I mean he's been a great -- he's been the
18 best mayor of El Paso I've known and the only mayor of
19 El Paso that I've known so he's the greatest mayor that
20 I've ever met. It gives me great, great pleasure to
21 introduce him and he's got some words to say us.
22 Mayor?
23 MR. LEESER: Well, thank you and you know,
24 I've had a -- I've had people come up from out in the
25 public and they'll walk up and tell me that I'm actually
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1 the best mayor in the city of El Paso and I do explain to
2 them that I'm currently the only mayor too. So I'm glad
3 I'm the best you've met. But, no, you're right. First of
4 all I want to thank you for -- for being here and I want
5 to thank UTEP for hosting this. It's -- it's important to
6 our community. But the Secretary's been here, what, four
7 times now?
8 MR. CASCOS: At least that.
9 MR. LEESER: Four times since I've been in
10 office and he's become a -- not only a good friend of mine
11 but really a good friend of the community and that's
12 really when you take office, you want to create
13 relationships but not for yourself, for your community,
14 community that you -- you represent. And, Secretary,
15 you've been a great friend to El Paso.
16 When we had our FAM (phonetic) tour and our
17 FAM tour is when we've actually brought companies to
18 El Paso to actually get them familiarized and give us our
19 guest speaker as one of the FAM tours and show up. His
20 flight was delayed, but we saved him a steak and lobster
21 and he did a great job of eating it and speaking.
22 But, no, I -- it's important when we bring
23 companies that not only they know that they have the
24 representation and -- and support of the city but also the
25 state and that's so important and you've been able to --
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1 to give us that and we -- and when I was sick -- and thank
2 goodness I'm fine -- you were texting me all the time
3 checking on me to make sure. And those little texts mean
4 a lot.
5 And, Judge, you were no different.
6 So, you know, they mean a lot as you
7 continue to recover so you did a great job, you're a great
8 friend. Thank you for being here. I know you're going to
9 be here for the Army/UTEP game and you'll be here and
10 touring Fort Bliss which is a great part of our community
11 where, you know, it represents 35,000 men and women
12 that -- that support our country and also -- so it's great
13 to have you here and representing the state and also being
14 part of that -- that huge part of our community. So thank
15 you again for being here.
16 I want to thank everybody for -- for being
17 here and making El Paso your home for the next couple
18 days. Thank you.
19 MR. CASCOS: Thank you, Mayor.
20 Our second special guest is the Honorable
21 Veronica Escobar, the El Paso County Judge. And the one
22 thing that we have in common aside from being, you know,
23 judges at one point, she's still a judge, is that we're
24 not on the ballot.
25 MS. ESCOBAR: Thank God.
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1 MR. CASCOS: That's so great. Right? Great
2 honor. I've had the pleasure of meeting Veron- -- I like
3 first-name basis -- meeting Veronica several times and
4 she's been a good friend as well. And the last time I was
5 here, I was -- I had the honor of being in her office and
6 we -- we chatted a little bit.
7 So with that, let me introduce to you the
8 Honorable Veronica -- Veronica Escobar, the county judge
9 of El Paso County.
10 MS. ESCOBAR: Thank you so much, I
11 appreciate it. And I'd like to echo the mayor's gratitude
12 to each and everyone of you for being here with us today
13 and for spending time with us in El Paso. I'm not sure --
14 I'm not certain how many of you have never been here. Can
15 I just see by a show of hands whose first time this is to
16 El Paso, anybody?
17 Okay. Well, welcome to the Sun City. Sorry
18 about the lack of sun today, but we are really a
19 tremendous community and if you have any time to explore,
20 I hope that you take the opportunity because this is
21 really one of the most beautiful communities in the
22 country, one of the warmest communities in the country and
23 with just some of the best people that you will ever meet,
24 people who will wrap their arms around each and every one
25 of you and embrace you as friends and family every time
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1 you're here.
2 And to the Secretary, so grateful that
3 you're leading this -- this organization, this group, this
4 body.
5 As the mayor mentioned, we are doing a lot
6 of work in El Paso and I think it mirrors very much the
7 work that this board is doing. Each and every one of us,
8 whether we represent a community, whether we represent the
9 private sector, whether we are in government, we are
10 always looking for ways to try to advance our interests
11 and ensure that we protect what it is that makes us strong
12 and unique. And for many of us on the border, that is our
13 proximity to the border, that is border trade, that is
14 transportation infrastructure, that is collaboration on
15 many levels. And boards and bodies like this are so
16 important. The -- the city and the county and our
17 economic development partners here in El Paso, we are
18 consistently looking for better ways to collaborate with
19 our partners in Mexico because we know that it is that one
20 voice -- speaking with one voice and working as one group,
21 as one region, that is what will help us get what we need
22 out of Mexico City, out of Austin, out of Washington, D.C.
23 And I think the more that all of us can work together,
24 those of us who have shared interests, those of us who
25 have shared challenges and look for ways to overcome those
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1 challenges, create opportunities from them and continue to
2 advance our interest, the better off we all will be. And
3 instead of looking at each other as competitors, seeing
4 each other as partners and collaborators. And so events
5 like these are really critical to that because as we all
6 know, when it comes to border issues, border trade, there
7 are major challenges. All you have to do turn on the
8 Today Show or Good Morning America and see what is being
9 said at the national level about communities like El Paso,
10 communities like other border communities and so as if we
11 did not have enough challenges on our plate, we also have
12 a lot of misinformation and a lot of myths out there so
13 there's a lot of work for all of us to do. But again it
14 is a tremendous opportunity and we're so so glad that
15 we're having this dialogue and these discussions here in
16 El Paso today.
17 Welcome, we're so glad to have you.
18 MR. CASCOS: Thank you very much. Thank you
19 very much Judge and Mayor. Of course you're welcome to
20 stay the whole meeting or whenever you-all need to scoot
21 out, I understand that -- that you have a busy day ahead
22 of you.
23 So let's -- as we do all meetings, let --
24 let's go around -- let's go around the room.
25 Oh, I'm sorry. Larry Garduno?
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1 MR. GARDUNO: Sorry, Mr. Secretary.
2 MR. CASCOS: There you are.
3 MR. GARDUNO: Good morning, everybody.
4 Thank you for letting me speak at the introduction of
5 your -- your opening meeting today. The -- Caroline asked
6 that I say -- asked to say a few words to kind of talk
7 about the TxDOT's transportation partnership as Senator
8 Cos- -- Secretary Cascos and this Border Trade Advisory
9 Committee and we are -- Caroline and her staff have --
10 will continue to work real hard with the Secretary's
11 office in trying to make sure that we capture the -- the
12 needs and the issues of the border, of the stakeholders on
13 the border.
14 The way this plays out for us is of course
15 is that we -- we continue to develop and deliver
16 transportation program for you-all across the state of
17 Texas and we need to make sure we capture the needs of the
18 border, you know, and that's a big role that you-all will
19 play as we try to build out our transportation system.
20 So thank you for letting us be a partner
21 with you, Secretary Cascos, in this -- this meeting and --
22 and we'll continue to support you guys and your
23 initiatives and what you're trying to do.
24 MR. CASCOS: Thank you very much and
25 welcome.
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1 All right. Now can we go? You do that?
2 Let's go ahead and start at that end, just kind of briefly
3 introduce yourself and let's go around the room.
4 MR. BOMBA: I'm Michael Bomba, I'm at
5 University of North Texas.
6 MS. PROZZI: I'm Jolanda Prozzi, I'm with
7 the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
8 MR. VILLA: Good morning, my name is Juan
9 Carlos Villa, with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
10 MR. CANNON: Andrew Cannon with the
11 Hidalgo County MPO.
12 MR. TAYLOR: Tommy Taylor with Fasken Oil
13 and Ranch, Limited.
14 MR. CANTU: Ramsey English Cantu, mayor for
15 the city of Eagle Pass, the other EP on the border.
16 MR. DRUSINA: Ed Drusina, United States
17 Commissioner for the International Boundary and Water
18 Commission.
19 MR. GARDUNO: You need me to --
20 MR. CASCOS: Yes, sir.
21 MR. GARDUNO: Lauren Garduno, Director of
22 Project Planning and Development TxDOT.
23 MR. BIELECK: Bob Bieleck, District
24 Engineer, El Paso.
25 MR. ALVAREZ: Good morning. Pete Alvarez,
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1 Laredo District Engineer.
2 MS. MAYS: Good morning. Caroline Mays with
3 Texas Department of Transportation and your host today.
4 And again I just want to welcome everybody. Thank you for
5 being here in El Paso. We brought the rain from Austin so
6 really glad and looking forward to the discussion this
7 morning so I don't want anybody being shy today. Really,
8 I think, you know, building on the last two meetings --
9 this is the third meeting of this committee -- a lot has
10 happened. You'll hear a lot today so really we want to
11 hear your feedback because we -- you know, Secretary
12 probably going to say this again. This committee will
13 only produce something good if everybody pitches in and --
14 and does their part. And I know we're going throw a lot
15 of information at you this morning, but, you know, please
16 work with us and help us, you know, develop this document
17 that essentially will be yours.
18 Thank you again for being here.
19 MR. MARTINEZ: Hector Martinez,
20 Trans-expedite 3PL here in El Paso.
21 MR. GARCIA: Josue Garcia with the Donna
22 International Bridge.
23 MR. OLAGUIBEL: Good morning. Juan
24 Olaguibel with the City of McAllen International Bridges.
25 MR. GONZALEZ: Gabriel Gonzalez, city of
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1 Harlingen.
2 MR. VALE: Sam Vale, Starr-Camarago Bridge.
3 MS. MAINWARING: Brenda Mainwaring, Union
4 Pacific Railroad.
5 MR. LOVE: John B. Love, III, city
6 councilman for the city of Midland and chairman of the
7 Permian Basin MPO.
8 MS. RAMIREZ: Good morning. Julie Ramirez.
9 I'm bridge director for Progreso International Bridge.
10 MR. ALDRETE: Good morning. Rafael Aldrete
11 with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute here in
12 El Paso.
13 MS. LOFTUS-ORWAY: Good morning. Lisa
14 Loftus-Orway with the Center for Transportation Research.
15 MR. CRISTINA: I'm Paul Cristina with BNSF
16 Railway.
17 MR. GIESBRECHT: Good morning. I'm Jake
18 Giesbrecht with Presidio International Port Authority.
19 MS. GARZA-REYES: Good morning. My name's
20 Cindy Garza with the Pharr EDC.
21 And did you want to me to say a little bit
22 about myself since I'm new or --
23 MR. CASCOS: If you want to.
24 MS. GARZA-REYES: Just FYI, I'm with the --
25 I'm with the Pharr EDC, I've been there for about a year,
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1 but I'm overseeing their infrastructure projects along the
2 port of entry. I have a federal background so I was with
3 a member of Congress for about 11 years. And so I'm happy
4 to be on this committee and -- and ready to get to work.
5 Thank you.
6 DR. PESTI: Geza Pesti, Texas A&M
7 Transportation Institute from College Station.
8 MS. LOPEZ: Good morning. My name is
9 Paulina Lopez, I work for Senator Jose Rodriguez.
10 MS. HARRISTON: Good morning. My is Kathryn
11 Harriston, I work with the Secretary of State.
12 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Hello, I'm
13 (inaudible) with Union Pacific. And don't believe
14 anything Sam Vale says about me.
15 MR. RAMOS: Good morning. My name's Joe
16 Ramos, I'm with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Border
17 Field Office.
18 MS. CARDONA: Good morning. I'm Anabel
19 Cardona, chairwoman and acting executive director for the
20 Rio Grande Valley Partnership.
21 MR. PASAN: Homer Pasan with TxDOT Pharr
22 district.
23 MR. CARO: Good morning. Eduardo Caro with
24 HNTB Corporation.
25 MS. VICTORIA: Good morning. My name is
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1 Isabel Victoria with Cambridge Systematics.
2 MS. MORENO: Good morning. Taylor Moreno
3 with the mayor's office.
4 MR. VOGT: Good morning. Welcome to
5 El Paso. Ruben Vogt, Chief of Staff for County Judge
6 Veronica Escobar.
7 MR. VALADEZ: Chris Valadez with the
8 Secretary of State's office.
9 MS. WOLF: Lindsey Wolf with the Secretary
10 of State's office.
11 MR. ARISTE: Good morning. Miguel Ariste,
12 Hidalgo County MPO.
13 MR. BOCANEGRA: John Bocanegra, Hidalgo
14 County MPO.
15 MS. BOYD: Marty Boyd. I'm advanced
16 transportation planning director of TxDOT, El Paso
17 District.
18 MR. VALTIER: Good morning. Eddie Valtier,
19 director of TP&D here in El Paso.
20 MS. MOTOMAYER: Good morning. I'm Alyssa
21 Motomayer the district administrator for TxDOT Laredo
22 district.
23 MR. URIBE: Tony Uribe, El Paso district
24 design engineer with TxDOT.
25 MR. CASCOS: Did we miss anybody?
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1 Oh, Manuela.
2 MS. ORTIZ: And I'm Manuela Ortiz with the
3 Texas Department of Transportation.
4 MR. CASCOS: The carrier of the magic stick.
5 We got everybody?
6 MR. HAGERT: Edward Hagert with the Texas
7 Department of Transportation.
8 MR. CASCOS: Okay. All right. Well, thank
9 you very much. And again thank you for being here today.
10 And as Caroline prefaced a few minutes ago, this committee
11 has been very very active at least -- at least since
12 Caroline and I have been working together and so we're
13 looking forward to it. And again this is not a --
14 For the new members, welcome. This is not
15 a -- an organization or a committee that -- that is
16 intended to pad a resume. It's intended for work, it's
17 intended for participation and -- and feedback and the --
18 I've sat on a couple of committees through TxDOT with the
19 Panama Canal and the Freight Advisory and they were
20 good -- good reports, but they were based solely on the
21 input of the members and a lot of the testimony that --
22 that we -- that we had.
23 The reason that we travel from city to city
24 is because of that, because Texas is big state and I
25 didn't want to have meetings, you know, strictly in
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1 Austin, Texas, so we've been travel- -- the last meeting
2 was in Dallas. Then I decided to come to El Paso. And
3 our next meeting will be in Brownsville. Then after that
4 we haven't decided, but I think we need to hit every
5 area -- major area in the state. Every- -- everyone
6 participates in border trade. Then, you know, to echo
7 what the judge has said is exactly right. You know, I
8 mean I want to be able to -- to enhance and -- and talk
9 about the border and also take away from the -- some of
10 the negativity that -- that people talk about the border
11 that don't come to the border. And -- and sometimes
12 people tend to say things about the border that have never
13 set foot on the border and so that is not good.
14 So it's up to us as ambassadors, you know,
15 of this great state to -- to follow that message through
16 that the border is a front door and not -- and not a back
17 door in Texas. And the importance of the border is such
18 that, you know, it drives our economy. Texas is just as
19 important to Mexico as Mexico is to Texas. And so as long
20 as we have that, you know, that -- that in mind -- because
21 it's a true -- it's a true statement -- then we should be
22 fine.
23 So with that again, thank you very much and
24 I know a lot of people have flights to catch and we
25 have -- want to try to get out of here about between 2:00
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1 and 2:30 so everybody can make their flights and so
2 let's -- let's move along quickly.
3 Okay. The next item on the agenda is -- is
4 the adoption of the minutes. Now, we did -- we did a
5 little bit better job of getting the minutes to you. I
6 hope everybody got the minutes before the meeting, get a
7 chance to review them. Okay? So if anybody has any
8 questions. If not I'd like to hear a motion to approve
9 the minutes as presented.
10 MR. LOVE: Move for approval.
11 MR. CASCOS: Okay. Move by -- by Mr. Love.
12 MR. LOVE: Sorry.
13 MR. CASCOS: Second by?
14 MR. GARCIA: Josue Garcia.
15 MR. CASCOS: By Josue Garcia.
16 All in favor say --
17 Any discussion?
18 All in favor signal by saying "Aye."
19 Any opposed?
20 Vote carries.
21 Welcome, Gerry.
22 MR. SCHWEBEL: To you, sir.
23 MR. CASCOS: I'm good. It's good to see you
24 again.
25 MR. SCHWEBEL: And you as well. Secretary.
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1 MR. CASCOS: Carlos is fine. It's good to
2 see you. Thank you very much for being here.
3 Please for the record, Mayor Pete Saenz has
4 shown up. And Gerry Schwebel from IBC bank is also in
5 attendance.
6 Okay. Next item on -- next item I think we
7 are back on schedule. Next item on the agenda is
8 Texas-Mexico border strategic transportation initiatives
9 plan. First -- first member is going to speak is
10 Michael -- Michael Bomba with UNT.
11 Michael.
12 Just a quick que- -- just a quick question
13 to all the -- all the presenters. Is it okay during your
14 presentation if people have an immediate question to
15 interject at that point and ask a question so they don't
16 wait till the end?
17 MR. BOMBA: Absolutely.
18 MR. CASCOS: Is that all right?
19 Okay. So the presenters know that.
20 MR. ALDRETE: If I may.
21 MR. CASCOS: Yes, sir.
22 MR. ALDRETE: We are going to switch the
23 order of the presentations. I was listed as the third,
24 but the person making the presentation for -- or for TTI
25 will be Dr. Pesti so he's -- he's getting ready.
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1 MR. CASCOS: Okay. That's fine. We're
2 good. Did you get shy all of the sudden or what is it?
3 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Got shot.
4 MR. CASCOS: Shy.
5 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Shy.
6 MR. ALDRETE: No, no, he's really the --
7 MR. CASCOS: All right.
8 MR. ALDRETE: -- the guy, his project. He's
9 the one who knows.
10 MR. CASCOS: Okay.
11 MR. ALDRETE: While he gets ready, what we
12 are going to -- what Dr. Pesti is going to present is --
13 is a publication that we -- we issue every year where we
14 look at -- it started about six years ago looking at the
15 trends of trade -- trade crossing the border northbound.
16 Over time we were able to start adding statistics of trade
17 going southbound so now what we are going to show you is a
18 picture of how that trade has evolved, where the trade --
19 where the traffic is going through which ports of entry on
20 the entire border, which are the main destinations and
21 also what are the trends out.
22 This year we incorporated a new -- new part
23 of the report where we start to -- to match the dates on,
24 you know, the -- for the data that we have as far as
25 trade -- trade volumes with the wait times, with the wait
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1 times that have been recorded by the RFI systems at TxDOT
2 with TTI systems has been deployed throughout the state.
3 So this is in sixth year and we are really trying to find
4 out if this is a -- this is work that should be continued.
5 So what we would really appreciate after you -- you look
6 at the presentation, we will appreciate your input as far
7 as this useful data for you because really we are doing
8 this for -- you know, for the use of the trade community,
9 the policy makers and so on so.
10 MR. CASCOS: Thank you, Rafa.
11 DR. PESTI: Hello, my name is Geza Pesti,
12 I've been working on this project with Rafaeal. Thanks,
13 Rafael, for describing it. I'm sorry for the delay, but I
14 didn't know that I would be first in the presentation
15 line.
16 Figure out how to switch this slide. Need
17 help. Can someone explain me [sic] how to use this
18 because it is not switching the slide.
19 Okay. So the objective for this project was
20 to look at across the border over the last 25-year period
21 and to determine the trade statistics and identify
22 potential trends and if there is any unexpected change
23 over the years.
24 The approach we used in analyzing the
25 freight detail over this 20-year period by board of
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1 transportation, the ports and destination states, the
2 different commodity types. We looked at 99 types of
3 commodities which we grouped. And we always looked at
4 average wait times of commercial vehicles which was
5 measured by the team.
6 Go to the next one please.
7 This graph shows the -- if you look at the
8 types in this graph, it shows the total trade, both export
9 and import, in U.S. dollars since 1995. And on the top
10 you can see the yearly changes in percent.
11 So can you click twice again.
12 Thank you.
13 So regardless of the two recessions -- the
14 early 2000 recessions and the global financial crisis --
15 you could see that there is -- the total trade almost more
16 than quadrupled during this time so that -- the --
17 separated export to import and this graph shows that
18 the -- over this entire period, export was about
19 20-25 percent lower, but they follow the very similar
20 trend. The export in average was about 44 percent of the
21 total trade with the contribution of import was 56.
22 We also looked at the mode of transport so
23 by -- for both the export and the import, we saw a very
24 similar distribution that at least four or five times
25 higher the volume of the traffic was -- of the trade was
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1 moved by trucks. I'm talking here about values here, not
2 volume. So the value of the freight which was moved by
3 trucks was 80 per- -- 82 percent and by rail is about
4 18 percent on both import and export.
5 In addition to looking at the mode of
6 transport and the exporting, we also look at where the
7 freight goes, where -- which states are the most active in
8 trading with Mexico and it looks like Texas is on the top.
9 This graph shows color coded and there are numbers based
10 on the first and third U.S. states and they are right. So
11 Texas is the first, California is the second, Michigan is
12 the third. And here we see the trend how the value of
13 trade changed between Mexico and U.S. And you can see
14 that California, Michigan, the other two major states,
15 there was increase in the last two years, but in Texas you
16 can see some decrease. In fact from 2014 to 2015, there
17 was an eight percent decrease based on this average we
18 looked at. But regardless of this, Texas is still -- the
19 trade between Mexico and Texas is more the three other
20 border states combined. You combine California, New
21 Mexico and Arizona, Texas is still way ahead of them.
22 We also looked at the commodities again.
23 There are 99 commodity types. They group that in six
24 groups, you can see here. I think you have it also in the
25 handout, although we have the side -- slide different from
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1 this presentation because it is updated with new data. So
2 we looked at the changes over time of these six -- these
3 are the six commodity groups and you can see that over
4 years, starting from 2007 to 2015, there is an increase in
5 traffic. You can see everywhere the 2007 recession, but
6 it is obvious that the manufactured goods are the main
7 commodity group that traded with Mexico followed by
8 minerals. And this is for export. But there is a very
9 similar pattern for import, but here the manufactured
10 goods are even more important compared to the other
11 commodity groups. I don't have time to go into the detail
12 of this graph, but we can talk about it later if anyone is
13 interested.
14 We also looked at average waiting times
15 again based on data which was collected by the TTI team
16 and these data are for 2014. It shows the intakes for
17 both the border and the -- the port of trade, as far as
18 Brownsville, has the highest with the longest wait times,
19 border crossing wait times, but the Bridge of the America
20 and Zaragoza and Colombia has significantly lower delays
21 based on the data measured in 2014. These are using the
22 Bluetooth data that are Bluetooth data both side of the
23 border. I assume anyone can talk about it much more.
24 Also we can look at what are the most
25 congested most -- the longest delays, what are the days
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1 and it looks like Saturdays were the longest delays at
2 almost all bridges except Wednesday and Friday in some
3 cases.
4 So in summary the trade has more than
5 quadrupled since 1995, the imports -- imports exceeded the
6 export about 20-25 percent during the entire time period.
7 Freight by trucks are four, five times higher than rail.
8 Trade at the Texas port of entry is more than the other
9 three states combined, other three border states combined.
10 Among the commodity groups, manufactured goods are the
11 highest -- highest rating commodities. In terms of wait
12 times, Saturday has the longest wait times so it's better
13 to avoid Saturday.
14 But thinking about what our -- what could
15 be -- who could be the potential beneficiaries of such
16 results if we continue this and if we go deeper, we think
17 the cheapest cost schedule or reroute freight will avoid
18 congestion. Policy makers can make more data-based
19 decisions and driving and the roads will benefit by
20 avoiding the times of the most congested time periods of
21 the -- of the freight movement.
22 I hope I was not too long.
23 Yes.
24 MR. VALE: Sam -- Sam Vale. These are all
25 interesting numbers, but working with people that give
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1 services at the ports of entry, regardless of the way it
2 comes, by rail or by truck, the staffing levels or the
3 processes, this is way too late. We're working -- we're
4 in '16 now and we're trying to project out two to three
5 years. You're going up with 13 years so it's nice
6 history, but what we need for both TxDOT and the trade is
7 to be able to anticipate where we're going to be so I
8 think these are good base informations, but I -- I
9 criticize them in Washington, I might as well criticize
10 them in Texas. We need to find mechanisms that have some
11 reliability in projecting forward.
12 How can we ask Customs to implement a
13 process that's going to speed things up based on something
14 that happened in 2013? It's got to be what's happening
15 now and going to happen in the next two years. Industry
16 will tell you, if they talk to you privately, that they
17 have the ability to project in their internal business
18 plans accurate projections of growth or -- are decreased
19 up to three years. Fourth year out it gets dicey, but
20 they have enough data internally on what they're going to
21 do. If they're going to move a production line, if
22 they're going to make -- if they have a contract coming up
23 for certain activities, they've got that information. How
24 we go about it, it seems to me is the most vital thing for
25 TxDOT and for the rest of those that have to provide
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1 services.
2 DR. PESTI: Yes, I agree with you. By the
3 way this 2015. This was one of the reason of the delay
4 because I change the slides. Your handout only shows out
5 to 2013, we went to 2015, but it's still late, I agree.
6 One thing which we are considering, among others, there
7 are variables such as diesel fuel prices and we are
8 working on correlating these data with the changes of
9 those. And projections in the price change and using the
10 correlation, we might also be able to do with some kind
11 forecasting. There are a bunch of other variables, I
12 believe you, which we should consider, but this was a very
13 small project. We just looked at what happened so far.
14 MR. ALDRETE: I might interject. We have
15 every -- the reports that we have every year for -- with
16 these statistics since 2009, those are available. But the
17 most recent one will be available able in the next one
18 month published with fresh data.
19 MR. CASCOS: Can you get that info to all
20 the committee members?
21 MR. ALDRETE: Yeah, we will.
22 MR. CASCOS: Thank you.
23 MS. MAYS: I wanted to state one comment. I
24 think, Sam, what really the point here is to look at
25 historical as well, you know, to better tell the story and
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1 then as we review, you know, can we look forward and, you
2 know, what he mentioned is that the projections that are
3 done. We've done our own projections on -- on the trade
4 flows. We have some of those numbers to 2040 where we're
5 looking at tremendous growth. So again I totally -- but
6 we need to have some of this historical data to be able to
7 project forward. But again also we need the stakeholders
8 to provide us with that data. Some of the data we have we
9 have to massage it a lot and then the time limit as of the
10 data is really really critical and I think the committee
11 can help us, you know, being able to access the data to
12 provide it to our -- you know, our -- our partners to be
13 able to help us and TTIs and help us to analyze that data
14 and really speak to your point. I think that's critical
15 for this committee moving forward.
16 MR. McELROY: This -- this is Matthew with
17 the city of El Paso. The -- the quality of data varies
18 significantly by port. The city of El Paso, for example,
19 you were asking for projections. About six months ago we
20 actually started doing projections. We can do projections
21 of volumes of wait times, of wait times by bridge, of
22 volumes by bridge, but it takes a significant investment
23 of time to come up with those econometric estimates going
24 into the future. And so we have the ability to do that,
25 we're happy to help any other port develop the kind of
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1 information that you need to be able to do those
2 projections, but unfortunately there's not a standard way
3 or -- or at least conceptually a way of getting all of the
4 ports to begin to do that so that we all have that
5 information so that we can forecast better.
6 MR. VALE: What he needs is more private
7 sector input from the corporations in a way that they will
8 be comfortable in sharing. They're not going to put their
9 fingerprints on something that is going to make it
10 difficult for them to proceed because of competitive
11 grounds and other -- but they really do have -- I
12 guarantee you ask anybody in -- in the major corporation,
13 they know their plans for next three years and it's very
14 high for year one, little less for year two, but doesn't
15 go lower than 80 percent for year three so that -- we need
16 that to plan forward because it's just -- you can't
17 hire -- with learning already, you can't hire a Customs
18 officer when you need it, you have to start hiring them a
19 year before you need it. You can't build highways, you
20 can't build -- do the road infrastructure, the ports.
21 It's -- it's a complicated process so I -- I just think we
22 need to put more emphasis on taking the bases and not
23 trying to linear project because if linear projections are
24 part of the formula, but they're not the solution, you
25 have to take into [sic] what's really changing.
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1 Two years ago, three years ago how many of
2 us thought we'd be exporting oil to Mexico? Well, we're
3 doing it now and they haven't even started to open up the
4 thing. So these are the kinds of dynamics that we need to
5 start. Just like the produce. All of the sudden, we got
6 more produce than we know how to handle.
7 MR. CASCOS: And I want you to hold those
8 thoughts and I want to come back with you on something.
9 Gerry?
10 MR. SCHWEBEL: Mr. Secretary, I just wanted
11 to also --
12 MR. CASCOS: Introduce. Introduce.
13 MR. SCHWEBEL: For the record I'm Gerry
14 Schwebel of Laredo.
15 You know, I was sharing with our mayor a
16 report that just came back from BTS, the Bureau of
17 Transportation statistics, where it makes reference to
18 our actual by value, the numbers really being down, the
19 trends being down by modes of transportation. The only
20 mode that is up is ra- -- is air. Rail, truck, everything
21 is down based on vol- -- on value, it's for the record
22 I'll submit it for -- for information.
23 But I think what we were looking at in
24 Laredo is I tried to -- try look at the variables of
25 perhaps programs like trusted shipper program. For
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1 example in the World Trade Bridge, you know, we have the
2 congestion issues, but the 2,000 -- 2,000 out of 10,000
3 trucks that are crossing through the World Trade Bridge
4 are trucks that are involved in the trusted shippers
5 program that are blended into the overall trucks because
6 we don't have a dedicated lane for those -- those types of
7 programs. So I think that if we look at a key variable to
8 look at relief of congestion at our ports of entry that we
9 perhaps look at those ports of entry that have programs
10 that are -- that are including trusted shipper users or
11 trusted shipper program members, CT PAC, et cetera,
12 because we may not be capitalizing on those programs or
13 those initiatives, you know, enough and we need to work
14 with the private sector, the state as well as the feds
15 with those types of programs to make sure that we all
16 understand clearly that in El Paso they may have this or
17 in Pharr they may have this or in Laredo they may have
18 this.
19 And we're not talking general congestion.
20 Yeah, we know congestion is a problem, but if we have more
21 dedicated lanes with just those 2,000 trucks in Laredo so
22 we're working on, right, Mayor, that that would probably
23 be -- improve on the congestion issue perhaps.
24 MR. SAENZ: May I go?
25 MR. CASCOS: Yes.
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1 MR. SAENZ: Yes, good morning. Pete Saenz,
2 mayor of Laredo, Texas. Can you-all hear me?
3 Yeah, okay. Yes, just adding to that as
4 well. We're in the process now of creating a fast lane at
5 the World Trade Bridge which is basically going to be a
6 dedicated lane or lanes that will take care of the CT PAC
7 or the trusted shipper carriers, plus the empties. The
8 fact that they all had our -- I guess intermingled and
9 mixed with -- with the other traffic, you know, did give
10 the privilege of the CT PACs to -- you know, to leave, you
11 know, to exit the port quicker. So simple things like
12 that, just delineating, being specific as to, you know,
13 what you're carrying and -- and creating these
14 efficiencies and also we're in the process of expanding
15 our bridge from eight lanes to -- to 16 lanes now, but of
16 course that's going to take a little time not through a --
17 an amendment of a Presidential program because we want
18 obviously every -- every port of entry, our bridges in
19 particular, to be as efficient as possible and not to lose
20 commerce.
21 MR. CASCOS: Thank you, Mayor.
22 Yes, sir.
23 MR. LEESER: One thing that I think has
24 been --
25 MR. CASCOS: Mayor Leeser.
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1 MR. LEESER: One thing that I think is
2 really important that, you know, we talk about things, you
3 know, that are coming into the U.S., but return on
4 investment's so important to all the companies we've been
5 working with so really going back into Mexico is just as
6 important because they have to continue to move those
7 trucks around. So we've been working with -- with the
8 bridges and we've been able to put a secondary x-ray
9 machine for those empties. You were talking about the
10 empties. The empties really going back into Mexico is as
11 important as the freight coming into the U.S. So we --
12 we've been working with it and will continue to work with
13 and I think you hit it dead on when you said you got to
14 work with the private sector. We can all figure what we
15 want, what we think it's great, but really at the end of
16 the day, we have to know what their capacities are and
17 what their cap- -- capacities needs are and if we don't
18 determine that, we won't be able to become successful.
19 And when you see eight percent down in the last slide is
20 because we have not been proactive to forecast what's
21 really going to be coming. But then, again, going back
22 south. So it's not only north traffic, south traffic is
23 equally as important.
24 MR. SAENZ: If I may, Mr. Secretary.
25 MR. CASCOS: Let's wrap it up.
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1 MR. SAENZ: Okay. The other point that I do
2 want to mention I think I mentioned it at -- the last
3 time. The preinspection concept is being studied and I
4 think we need to pay closer attention to it. Hopefully
5 the results will come out and if it is that proves itself
6 of worthy, then I think that's -- that's another step that
7 we can have, a preinspections on the Mexican side before
8 they enter the U.S. side and that should also make things
9 more efficient for us.
10 MR. CASCOS: Thank you.
11 MR. DRUSINA: Question.
12 MR. CASCOS: Yes, sir.
13 MR. DRUSINA: Just a quick question for
14 Dr. Pesti.
15 Ed Drusina.
16 The eight percent down that you indicated in
17 the slide six for Texas --
18 DR. PESTI: Yes.
19 MR. DRUSINA: -- did you -- in your research
20 did you focus that it was being caused because of
21 congestion or were there other factors involved?
22 DR. PESTI: No, it was not --
23 MS. MAYS: Will you use the microphone?
24 DR. PESTI: -- it was not due to congestion
25 and it was just over -- it was for the entire year. So
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1 this was the reduction back in the previous year so -- and
2 if we could see that not only this year but previous --
3 last year, there was a 1.5 percent reduction compared to
4 2013 so it's not congestion related. It -- if congestion
5 they would use another port, I assume.
6 MR. DRUSINA: So what is causing it? Do you
7 have any --
8 DR. PESTI: You cannot figure out the --
9 based on the data, what was -- we didn't look at the
10 reasons, we looked at the data from the statistics data --
11 data base.
12 MR. SCHWEBEL: So you're basing it on value
13 on the import of -- aren't you? Aren't those numbers that
14 you're looking at, you know, in dollar figures based on
15 value?
16 DR. PESTI: Yes.
17 MR. SCHWEBEL: So, you know, this report
18 that I was referring to -- this is Gerry Schwebel again --
19 BPS attributes the price of crude -- of oil that having an
20 impact on some of those products that -- that have had an
21 impact, are being impacted by the price of oil in regards
22 to those dollar figures. That's what I'll submit it, you
23 know, for the record.
24 MR. DRUSINA: Mr. Secretary, Ed Drusina
25 again. It might be an area that the state should
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1 investigate further to see if it is being driven by oil or
2 other factors within the state that's driving this down.
3 MR. CASCOS: I would venture to say it is
4 principally oil driven and I think that we also need to
5 recognize that this -- this dip in oil's going to be a
6 hiccup, I mean I think it's going to come back, it's
7 already starting to make a little bit of movement. But
8 any -- you know, let me go to Sam's point. I think this
9 is exactly what we spoke about at the last meeting. When
10 someone gives a presentation, perfect, and then we start
11 with the feedback, that's a time that -- that I want to
12 see some recommendations. I want to recommend that we do
13 this, let's get it on the record because that -- that's
14 what's going to drive this report. So if you don't want
15 to recommend at this point, you got to give it some
16 thought, then when you go back home, you put it in the
17 form of an e-mail saying "regarding section" and you got
18 the agenda, "this is what I'd like to recommend," then at
19 some point bring it to the whole board and see if there's
20 a consensus on that.
21 So those are good points, but now I want to
22 hear not -- not right now, but I want to hear what's my --
23 you know, what's the recommendation. And then we take it
24 from there because it's good dialogue, but if we don't get
25 it back in terms of recommending something, it's going to
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1 fall on deaf ears so I want to see something in writing.
2 Okay? You see what I mean? And don't have to do it
3 today, but I'm saying is as we talk and Gerry you had some
4 good points. "My recommendation is," whatever it is.
5 Okay?
6 MR. SCHWEBEL: May I explain fast?
7 MR. CASCOS: Yeah.
8 MR. SCHWEBEL: Well, fast lane's requested
9 shipper port.
10 MR. CASCOS: Whatever it is. I mean, you
11 know, and then when we -- when I had the other committees,
12 it was just like that. We'd make a recommendation and a
13 lot of it is we understand that it's -- it's fund driven,
14 it's money driven, you know, at the local, state or
15 federal level. But that's okay, that's not our chore.
16 Our chore is to come up with recommendations and it may be
17 even recommendations how we can solutionize those -- those
18 issues. Okay? All right? Okay.
19 If there's nothing else, let's move on to
20 the next presentation, Juan Carlos Villa.
21 MR. BOMBA: It's going to be Michael.
22 MR. CASCOS: Oh, Michael, you're going back?
23 Okay.
24 MR. BOMBA: Sorry, I need to adjust this a
25 little bit.
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1 Good morning, everybody. This part of the
2 presenta- -- or this morning's work that we're going to be
3 doing is the actual work component on the strategic
4 transportation blueprint or strategic plan for the BTAC
5 committee. And so what we're going to be doing today is
6 we're going to be reviewing the proposed vision and
7 mission statements and goals and objectives. What we've
8 done to sort of get this thing rolling is to -- on the --
9 on the TxDOT side and in between UNT and TTI is to come up
10 with some general ideas about what these things might say
11 and have that presented to you as something that you can
12 kind of beat up on and turn it into what it truly reflects
13 what the committee -- you know, what they think. And so
14 when you see these things, we need to know from you, are
15 they on target, are they off target, do we need to add
16 something, do you not like a word or something needs to
17 come out. Just whatever we need to do to change things to
18 reflect what you truly feel as a committee reflects your
19 beliefs.
20 Okay. So how did we get here? Well, it's
21 been 22 years now since NAFTA'S been implemented, there
22 have been a lot of challenges and opportunities during
23 that process. A lot of the -- the challenges have fallen
24 on the local communities to deal with, particularly if
25 they have ports of entry. And so for a long period of
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1 time that's really at the state and local level, that's
2 how these things were dealt with. Then the FHWA prepared
3 these master plans in 2012 and -- between 2012 and 2015 or
4 2013? 2012 and 2013 they prepared these three master
5 plans, but they still split up the border into three
6 regions so we didn't have this sort of holistic approach
7 for how to look at the border. So that's what this
8 committee is going to do, they're going to finish the
9 work. You're going to put together the final holistic
10 approach for the border. Of course it'll be updated over
11 time, but this will be the first time this has been done.
12 And that will be used to -- to guide the state and federal
13 expenditures along the border to promote trade.
14 Okay. So the first thing I want to show you
15 is a vision statement and we're going to be using a bunch
16 of terms. We're going to be using vision statement,
17 mission statement, goals and objectives. I'm going to
18 define what we mean by each of those because sometimes
19 they sound like they mean the same thing, but really they
20 have a specific purpose.
21 So the vision statement is basically what an
22 organization or in this case an effort, what it wants to
23 accomplish in the future. It should be inspirational, you
24 don't have to cry when you read it, but it should make you
25 kind of feel good about it, and it should be succinct, it
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1 should explain exactly what it is you're going to do. So
2 the one that we came up with is to collaboratively foster
3 integrated and efficient trade across the Texas-Mexico
4 border and to promote economic development in the border
5 regions throughout the state of Texas and the nation.
6 And those number that we -- I'm sorry --
7 those words that we highlighted in red, those reflect the
8 key concepts that we've incorporated into this vision
9 statement based upon what you told us and what the charge
10 of the BTAC is.
11 So at this point this where I need you-all
12 to give us some feedback and to communicate with us. What
13 do you think about this as a vision statement? Is there
14 something missing? Is there something you want to add?
15 Is there a word you don't like or a different word you
16 want to swap out and put in its place?
17 MS. ESCOBAR: I have a suggestion just in --
18 in terms of ensuring that we communicate to the state and
19 to the rest of the country that what happens on the border
20 benefits everyone and so -- because that's frequently the
21 challenge. And that's part of why the border frequently
22 is used as a punching bag by, you know, politicians in DC
23 and Austin is -- is they don't either want to understand
24 or they don't have the capacity to understand that trade
25 at the border is beneficial to the state and national
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1 economy. So with that as the context, the way that I
2 would change this is at the latter end, to promote
3 economic development in the border re- -- or to promote
4 economic development that benefits the border region, the
5 state of Texas and the nation so that they understand
6 they're the recipients of the economic development that
7 we're fostering.
8 MR. BOMBA: Right. Right. That's -- that's
9 a very good point and that's something that we're trying
10 to do as well is to make sure that that relationship
11 between the border and the rest of the country is
12 understood. That's one of our missions.
13 While we're getting the comments, Jolanda
14 will be typing them in and rewriting it so I won't forget
15 them because Jolanda's going to take care of them, edit as
16 we go.
17 MS. MAYS: Yeah. And really we want to walk
18 away here today, committee members, with, you know, a
19 concrete vision statement so all the comments will --
20 Yolanda's going to revise it and then at the end, we'll
21 throw it back out and make sure that we captured what you
22 guys really are articulating here. We want this kind of
23 done today so appreciate your -- your comments, Judge.
24 MR. LOVE: Well, this is John Love, city of
25 Midland. I agree with everything that Judge just said. I
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1 would add the word somewhere in there communities, Texas
2 communities, national community, border communities to try
3 to personalize it a little bit so that people can identify
4 with it and -- and understand that it's benefiting them,
5 not just some innocuous state or United States.
6 MR. BOMBA: That's a very good point.
7 Especially in the current political climate.
8 Other suggestions, ideas, critiques?
9 Yes.
10 MR. RAMOS: Working with the federal
11 government one of the things that we write documents that
12 are going to go upwards towards the department or further
13 if they are connected with any type of other foreign
14 country, it's either -- it's either domestic or
15 international. And here you're talking about
16 international traffic so, you know, by Texas-Mexico
17 border, you're isolating this thing here. And you put
18 that in front of the federal folks, they look at it at a
19 region. You want this to be holistic and as -- you know,
20 to be up there in regards to any other international
21 trade, whether it be with the European nations or with
22 the, you know, Asian countries or whatever, you want to
23 bring it up to that level. It's only a suggestion.
24 MR. BOMBA: Thank you. I think we'll have
25 to think about how to incorporate that or --
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1 MR. SAENZ: Along those lines I would -- and
2 I think it's a very good point maybe as we define trade to
3 collaboratively foster and integrate and say global trade,
4 international trade or -- it says trade, but then it says
5 Texaco [sic] Mexico in a few words down and it -- it may
6 imply that it -- that they were limiting so maybe
7 somewhere global international or --
8 MR. BOMBA: So -- so I guess we want to
9 incorporate that into those transshipment or some -- some
10 sort of movement of goods from other countries through
11 Texas and Mexico but across the border. Is that -- is
12 that what you were trying to get to?
13 MR. SAENZ: Yes. Yeah. And whatever the
14 group wants, but it -- we need to open it up, but it's
15 all, you know, all type of trade. And that may imply it,
16 but it may not, you know.
17 MR. VALE: Even if it goes by air, by
18 rail --
19 MR. CASCOS: Sam Vale.
20 MR. VALE: Sam Vale.
21 -- sea, it's going to come to a Texas
22 highway somewhere, it's got to get on a truck to be
23 delivered so -- to TxDOT as opposed to just the border
24 should be important to know if it's coming and where will
25 it get on a highway and be transported around the state of
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1 Texas so we -- we incorporate the border part, but we
2 cannot ignore what's coming from north to south. As
3 somebody mentioned, the southbound is just as important to
4 mix into what do we need at TxDOT? I'm mean I'm assuming
5 we're looking for the best interest of TxDOT here in this
6 committee, Texas. Both Texas and infrastructure and the
7 infrastructure provider is primarily TxDOT.
8 MR. CASCOS: Right -- right after this
9 segment of the presentation, I've asked Caroline to -- I
10 want everybody -- pretty much has seen the member of the
11 spider web where -- where, you know, with TxDOT GPS, I
12 think that's going to be very very illuminating for the
13 mayor and the county judge about traffic, what happened
14 in -- from, you know, from The Valley to Laredo to
15 El Paso. I know we've all seen it, but every time I see
16 it, it's like holy moly, wow. You know, and I think
17 once -- once those -- you know, once we see that again and
18 we see that it -- you know, that the traffic does not stop
19 at the border, it keeps going throughout the -- you know,
20 basically through the northern hemisphere so I think
21 that's important so we'll get to that because I want the
22 mayor and the judge to see that and then we're going to go
23 ahead and e-mail. For those of you-all that want that
24 particular e-mail where it shows those -- those charts,
25 that traffic, ask us and we'll get that to you because I
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1 want to use it in the future speaking points and then
2 you-all can use it too if you ever get called upon to
3 speak at your Rotary Club or something to get that message
4 out because our message is here. For us it's easy, but we
5 need to get that message out to those people that are not
6 involved in the day-to-day activity that -- you know,
7 along the border.
8 Yes, sir.
9 MR. GIESBRECHT: This is Jake Giesbrecht
10 from Presidio. In Presidio we have the parks, the
11 national park, Big Bend National Park, and the state park
12 and we have issues that we're working on right now with
13 the tourists industry. I realize this is more trade, but
14 could we also add the tourism here because there's a big
15 need in Presidio for us to issue the visiting visas that
16 TTP does there for the people and there's a lot of people
17 coming through there and we want to concentrate on that.
18 We're concentrating on that a little bit more than the
19 trade.
20 MR. CASCOS: Well, let -- you know, albeit
21 that's a good point and that could be a -- a supplement as
22 a recommendation. I don't know if that would be
23 appropriate to include that segment into this mission
24 statement. We can make it as part of our report as a
25 recommendation down the line. I don't think we should
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1 focus on our mission list. Let's -- let's stay focused on
2 what the mission is and there's a lot of stuff out there.
3 I mean parks and tourism and we could add everything in
4 there, but we need to be very very concise and deliberate
5 what that mission statement is. I think what -- what the
6 judge mentioned falls into place. You know we could
7 probably add, you know, some kind of global initiative or
8 something in there so kind of work on that. Okay.
9 MR. BOMBA: Jolanda, you're --
10 MS. PROZZI: Yeah.
11 MR. BOMBA: Should we show this, Caroline,
12 at the end what our changes are?
13 MS. MAYS: Yeah.
14 MR. CASCOS: As soon as you get it ready,
15 yeah, I'd like -- I'd like -- yeah.
16 MR. BOMBA: Okay. So are there any more
17 comments on the mission statement, if not we'll move on.
18 I'm sorry. To the vision statement, then we'll move on to
19 the mission statement. Okay.
20 MR. CASCOS: Move on.
21 MR. BOMBA: Okay. This one's a little bit
22 more complicated. So the mission statement describes or
23 defines the purpose of the plan, what we're going to do
24 and how it will be done. So what we've written as sort
25 of -- is a guide current and future strategies and actions
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1 relating to the Texas-Mexico trade gateway, transportation
2 corridor, infrastructure and operations to facilitate
3 efficient flows across border trade that enhances not only
4 competitiveness of the state of Texas and the nation.
5 So that's a very complicated sentence that
6 we may need to maybe split it into two sentences. But
7 again the red words represent the main themes we wanted to
8 incorporate into it and so if you could help us think
9 about how to structure this and also if we're missing
10 concepts, what concepts should be in there, if you don't
11 like the words any --
12 MR. CASCOS: I guess my -- my question would
13 be enhances economic competitiveness with whom? Who are
14 we competing with?
15 MR. BOMBA: I think we're looking at the
16 state as far as making Texas more competitive on a
17 global -- on global environment.
18 MR. CASCOS: Well, I think that needs --
19 MR. BOMBA: Yeah.
20 MR. CASCOS: -- somehow -- and not somebody
21 having to infer that.
22 MR. BOMBA: Right. Right. And the nation
23 as well. We're thinking about Texas first, you know --
24 MR. CASCOS: Correct.
25 MR. BOMBA: -- and the nation second.
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1 MR. CASCOS: Yes, ma'am.
2 MS. ESCOBAR: Sorry. As a English
3 teacher -- I -- the -- I'm having a hard time
4 understanding what the -- what is the -- what is the main
5 goal here of this mission statement?
6 MR. BOMBA: Okay. So --
7 MS. ESCOBAR: Is it -- is it -- is it to
8 influence strategy and policy?
9 MR. BOMBA: Well, I think the mission
10 statement is to try to clarify what exactly the strategic
11 plan is trying to do. So the vision statement is what the
12 BTAC is sort of collectively trying to accomplish.
13 MS. ESCOBAR: Right.
14 MR. BOMBA: And then the mission statement
15 speaks specifically to the written document, what is this
16 written document going to do and how is it going to do it.
17 MS. ESCOBAR: Right. And so what do we want
18 that written document to do? We want it to influence
19 strategy and public policy. Right?
20 MR. BOMBA: Right.
21 MS. ESCOBAR: Is -- I mean is that --
22 MR. BOMBA: And we will go into goals and
23 objectives when we lay those out.
24 MS. ESCOBAR: Right. No, no, and, believe
25 me, I get the -- the whole mission. I'm just -- I'm
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1 trying to -- because I'm trying to rewrite it a little
2 bit --
3 MR. BOMBA: Sure.
4 MS. ESCOBAR: -- to offer a suggestion, but
5 I'm trying to understand what the focus is because it's --
6 there's a lot here.
7 MR. BOMBA: There is, yeah. And I kind of
8 broke it down so you just help me understand it better
9 because it is a very complicated sentence. But as far as
10 our purpose, my understanding from this is that it's to
11 enhance economic competitiveness of the state of Texas and
12 the nation. What we're trying to do is to guide current
13 and future strategies and actions related to Texas-Mexico
14 trade gateways and transportation corridors and then how
15 we're going to do it is by facilitating the efficient flow
16 of trade. So if that --
17 MS. MAYS: Michael, if I may, you know, for
18 the judge's benefit, essentially this committee has been
19 tasked with coming with a report in the next few months
20 that, one, looks at what are the key issues and challenges
21 facing the border. And then from a very big picture, come
22 up with potential strategies and recommendations that the
23 Secretary, you know, needed to -- so this -- the mission
24 statement is for that report. What do the committee, you
25 the committee members want this report to achieve or help
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1 achieve. You know, what is -- you know, like you
2 mentioned, influencing decision makers in terms of whether
3 it's funding or highlighting, talked about communicating
4 the importance and the benefits of the border beyond the
5 border region so it might be helpful maybe, Michael, to go
6 to the goals and objectives first and then maybe come back
7 to the mission statement for the benefit of the group and
8 then come back to this because I think the goals that were
9 outlined might actually help the committee to better
10 formulate what the mission statement for the actual report
11 will be.
12 MR. BOMBA: I think that's a good idea. So
13 why don't we skip ahead to the goals and objectives, then
14 we can come back and work on this mission statement.
15 MR. LEESER: One thing that I -- this is
16 Oscar Leeser -- that, you know, I know we're trying to get
17 the words straight, we're trying to get the mission
18 statement, but when we talk to who -- who we're reaching
19 out to, which is the rest of the country, is we need to
20 build value and -- and how do you build value? Because
21 you're trying to earn someone's business, you're trying
22 earn someone's respect so, you know, to have a lot of big
23 words is good but to really establish our mission and
24 actually build value, what we're trying to do, as anybody
25 that knows how to talk to any company or anybody that you
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1 want to earn their business to bring them in, you have to
2 build value, give them a reason why they need to believe
3 in our mission. So I think it's important as we look at
4 it is how do we build value and not just have a really
5 neat saying.
6 MR. BOMBA: Thank you. That's -- that's a
7 very good point.
8 MR. SAENZ: If I may add to. The word
9 "guide" for me is soft and I know we're going to look at
10 the goals, but I was thinking something more definitive,
11 you know, develop, implement, investigate. Say develop
12 and implement --
13 MS. ESCOBAR: Implement -- implement I mean
14 because we're trying to influence public policy and
15 economic development strategy. Right? So the -- I agree
16 with you. So influence --
17 MR. SAENZ: Implement and influence.
18 MS. ESCOBAR: Yes. -- economic development,
19 strategy and public policy. Yes.
20 MR. CASCOS: I would add implement and --
21 MR. SAENZ: (Speaking sotto voce.)
22 MR. CASCOS: Yeah, implement and influence
23 or influence and implement, I think they -- we could use
24 them both.
25 MR. BOMBA: Okay. I'm going to go ahead and
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1 move on to the goals --
2 MR. CASCOS: Yeah, go on.
3 MR. BOMBA: -- and we can come back to this
4 and decide so we do have a limited amount of time.
5 Okay. So the goal -- the difference between
6 a goal and objective in this is the goal is sort of the
7 overarching principle, what it is we're trying to achieve.
8 And the objectives are the more concrete or measurable
9 steps of achieving that goal. So the first goal we have
10 is to achieve a comprehensive and unified vision for the
11 border, like members of the border community. And our
12 objectives are to establish a system consisting of BTAC
13 members, identify goals with a clear method for achieving
14 them, integrate individual community goals and objectives
15 into borderwide goals and objectives. And this is part of
16 our idea of having a more coherent working community where
17 everyone's not just looking at their particular interest
18 but how their particular interest fit into the larger
19 good. So that's an important goal what we're trying to do
20 today, work together. Provide a platform for coordinating
21 public and public and private sector goals along the
22 border which doesn't exist at the moment at a statewide
23 level and identify both the challenges and opportunities
24 for Tex- -- the Texas-Mexico border region.
25 And as the Secretary said at the beginning,
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1 everything's on the table to talk about, both the good and
2 the challenges, so we want to have a very clear vision of
3 the future. So looking at this goal and looking at these
4 objectives, what is it that you think might need to be
5 added, changed, someway modified?
6 MR. CASCOS: Go on.
7 MR. BOMBA: Okay. Goal 2 is enhance Texas'
8 economic competitiveness, identify critical infrastructure
9 constraints along the border along connecting corridors
10 for future improvements, inform the state's decision
11 makers and general public about the importance of trade
12 with Mexico to the Texas economy, ongoing analysis of
13 trade, trends and issues and target initiatives that
14 support or build key industry sectors -- I'm sorry --
15 target initiatives that support or build key industry
16 sectors that engage in cross-border trade and that can be
17 either along the border or further away, even if it's --
18 you know, into what we call hinterland, further into the
19 state of Texas or even further out into the nation. We
20 want to be able to support them as they interact or
21 interface with them.
22 MR. CRISTINA: Paul Cristina. Paul Cristina
23 with BNSF. I wonder if this isn't maybe rolled in --
24 these objectives you've identified are they identified in
25 other goals like stakeholder engagement and engaging
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1 policymakers or even the idea that our mission is to
2 enhance competitiveness. Do we want a goal to do that as
3 well? And aren't all of our goals trying to accomplish
4 the mission of enhancing competitiveness?
5 MR. BOMBA: It's all supposed to nest and so
6 maybe not nest like in a very clear direct way, but -- but
7 these goals all feed into the mission and the imprint, you
8 know, vision of the document and --
9 MS. MAYS: And if I may, Paul, the -- the
10 reason we have this as a separate goal is when we --
11 essentially when the committee goes to recommendation, how
12 do we enhance economic competitiveness so that's why it's
13 a goal, you know. So you later on you have to think about
14 what the strategies that we can put in this report as a
15 recommendation to enhance our competitiveness.
16 MR. BOMBA: Right.
17 MS. MAYS: Yeah.
18 MR. BOMBA: But we -- we don't think that
19 all of the things that -- all of the other things that --
20 all the other things that we're trying to accomplish,
21 don't those all enhance economic competitiveness which is
22 the mission of the board?
23 MS. MAYS: Yeah, the mission is our -- is a
24 statement, but, you know, when you go to the
25 recommendation is the actions. What types of actions are
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1 we going to be doing? And again we can come back and
2 revisit this, but think, you know, beyond just a goal.
3 Think about, you know, what strategies, you know, will
4 help us get to, you know, to achieve the mission that we
5 just identified earlier.
6 MR. BOMBA: John?
7 MR. LOVE: Yes, sir, this is John Love. I
8 may have slept since the last meeting, but didn't we have
9 this conversation at our last meeting about the word
10 "competitiveness"? I thought we --
11 MR. CASCOS: I don't remember.
12 MR. LOVE: Well, I personally like the word
13 "enhance Texas economic progression" because it signifies
14 moving forward and it doesn't have this ambiguity of who
15 are we competing against or who are we competing with.
16 And I think that's what the goal is is for the state and
17 the nation and the borders to progress. Maybe someone has
18 a better word.
19 MS. MAYS: Prosperity. Economic prosperity.
20 MR. LOVE: Possibly.
21 MR. CASCOS: All right. Go on.
22 MR. BOMBA: Okay. Goal 3, improve the
23 operation and efficiency and capacity of trade gateways
24 which include the ports of entry.
25 So we wanted to distinguish here when we say
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1 trade gateways that we're not looking just at the border
2 itself, the border crossing itself, the bridges and other
3 infrastructure there, but we're also looking at the
4 connecting highways and railways to the border.
5 As far as our objectives, assess the current
6 and future needs of border infrastructure capacity and
7 operations. Identify new technologies for deployment that
8 will aid with border management of POEs and our
9 approaching roadways, address border wait times,
10 facilitate efficient trade flows. And this -- you know
11 these things are centered in what we can do in Texas.
12 Obviously there's a lot going on. Well, what we can do as
13 the state of Texas. There are a lot of things going on in
14 this process that are federal that we don't have a lot of
15 influence over. Of course there are things happening in
16 Mexico that we don't have a lot of influence over.
17 MR. LOVE: Do you have a distinction in your
18 mind between improve the operation and efficiency? In
19 other words when you say "improve the operation," are you
20 actually talking about effectiveness versus efficiency?
21 MR. BOMBA: Well, I -- I'm thinking --
22 MR. LOVE: John Love by the way. Sorry.
23 MR. BOMBA: Yeah, thank you. Efficiency I
24 think of almost in economic terms. All operations I think
25 of almost in sort of transportation terms, if that makes
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1 sense. So in other words the operations I think of the
2 actual physical moving around of vehicles and the cargo
3 and things like that. And when I think of efficiencies, I
4 think of reducing cost, minimizing cost. But there may be
5 other ways that you-all want to present that. That's
6 just -- in my mind that was --
7 MR. LOVE: Okay.
8 MR. BOMBA: Any other suggestions or
9 questions about that?
10 MR. CASCOS: Gerry? Gerry Schwebel.
11 MR. SCHWEBEL: Can't we just say address
12 just -- the objective is to reduce the wait times. What
13 could we say re- -- you know, the objective is to -- the
14 reduction of wait times, not just to address them, but we
15 want to reduce them.
16 MR. CASCOS: Yeah, change it. That's good.
17 MR. BOMBA: That's an easy one.
18 MR. CASCOS: Just -- just a postscript on
19 the point. Is -- do we want -- do we want to -- I guess
20 as a group, is everyone okay with ports of entry versus
21 putting land ports of entry? Anybody reading could -- you
22 know, could infer our -- our coastal, our ports, our water
23 ports, or is everybody okay with the ports of entry? Is
24 that all right? Okay.
25 MR. LOVE: Well, everybody here may be okay,
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1 but how does that relate to the public because I will tell
2 you, as I started reading information to bring myself up
3 to speed, the difference between port of entry land and
4 then inland port of entries and airports is a little bit
5 confusing. It might be confusing to the public as well.
6 MR. CASCOS: What do you-all think? Is it a
7 big -- is it a big deal?
8 Okay. Let's switch that land to land ports
9 of entry or border ports of entry. I mean something
10 that -- that kind of sets it apart from either your inland
11 ports or your coastal ports. Just add something in there
12 just to identify.
13 MR. BOMBA: Do you have that, Jolanda?
14 All right. Do you have any other comments
15 on this particular goal?
16 MR. CASCOS: Okay. Move on.
17 MR. BOMBA: Okay. Goal 4, improve
18 transportation corridor -- corridors and connections with
19 the border regions and between border regions and the
20 remainder of the state and the nation.
21 So in this particular goal, obviously we
22 want to have good connections as cargo goes back and forth
23 across the border with the hinterlands within the state
24 and the nation, but also we wanted to emphasize the need
25 for cargo to move efficiently between border communities
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1 because sometimes things are going from say The Valley to
2 Laredo so -- or maybe from Laredo to El Paso, that needs
3 to move efficiently as well. And as we see in the -- in
4 the animation that Caroline has or the flows of the trucks
5 you can see how things are moving sort of sideways, not
6 just up and down. So that -- we want -- we want to
7 capture that within this particular goal. Now, as far as
8 our objectives, identify interregional border
9 trade-related transportation needs and investment
10 strategies, identify strategic financial trade corridors,
11 needs and investment strategies. Identify opportunities
12 to improve existing highway rail corridors serving Texas
13 ports of entry through infrastructure investments and
14 operational efficiencies, support the development of
15 trade-related transportation and infrastructure for new
16 corridors that serve the border region and explore
17 opportunities for alternative infrastructure such as
18 truck-only lanes.
19 MR. SCHWEBEL: Mr. Secretary, I think
20 somewhere down the line I think we need to make sure that
21 we're consistent in our -- in our modes of transportation.
22 And I -- and I know we're talking about highway, we're
23 talking about rail, but when we talk about Texas and
24 trade, it's -- it involves like you said maritime, air and
25 now even pipeline transportation. So I don't know if when
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1 we talk about in regards to these connections whether it
2 addresses all modes of transportation, not limited to any
3 one or two.
4 MS. MAYS: Yeah, the idea was really
5 multimodal, Gerry. Yeah, it wasn't just for the highways.
6 When we talk about quotas, we're talking about rail
7 corridors, we're talking about highway corridors and then
8 a connection. We're talking about air, pipelines and
9 maritime as well so this is multimodal.
10 MR. CASCOS: Go on.
11 MR. BOMBA: Okay. Goal number 5,
12 stakeholder engagement and public awareness. Identify
13 private sector stakeholders and border communities,
14 participate in the planning process. Communicate the
15 importance of the border. Tell the border story. And by
16 this we would -- things that would be done would be like
17 outreach materials, newsletters, public informational
18 meetings, provide legislative briefings, reports and
19 testimony to elected and appointed officials as well as
20 the general public. Those are some of the ideas we had.
21 Outline potential strategies on
22 trade-related transportation issues along the border for
23 consideration by decision makers. And finally provide a
24 forum for BTAC members -- I'm sorry -- provide a forum at
25 BTAC meetings for the public and private sector,
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1 stakeholders provide input on border and trade-related
2 transportation. Of course we do that with our speakers,
3 but I think the idea is that there be another venue -- or
4 not another venue but another opportunity for them to tell
5 us what their experiencing and be able to incorporate that
6 into what we do.
7 Any ideas, suggestions?
8 MR. CASCOS: Just for the record, Alan
9 Russell has joined us.
10 Alan, thank you.
11 MR. RUSSELL: Thank you.
12 MR. BOMBA: Move on to number 6. Enhance
13 binational and regional communication and coordination,
14 collaboration, cooperation with gateways and corridors.
15 Objectives are develop and implement programs for the
16 direct engagement of Mexican transportation officials at
17 the federal, state and local level. Develop and implement
18 programs for the direct engagement of Texas border regions
19 on border and trade-related transportation issues, needs
20 and investment strategies. And broader communications
21 between border regions and nonborder regions.
22 Any thoughts?
23 Goal 7, better understand institutions and
24 institutional frameworks on both sides of the border to
25 better address binational gateway and trade corridor
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1 infrastructure challenges. Our objective would be to
2 identify and document binational, federal, state, regional
3 and local government agencies and the roles and
4 responsibilities along the border.
5 So the idea is that we need to as planners
6 understand not only what we do -- because that's very
7 convoluted because it's like so many public agencies --
8 but also what's happening on the Mexican side because as
9 government's change, as laws change, responsibilities
10 change and so what may have been done 15 years ago was
11 really useful is now probably outdated so we need to have
12 a better idea of what's going on and that possibly is one
13 of the white papers we'll be presenting later in the year.
14 Any other ideas? We only have one here so
15 if you-all have ideas about what could be added, that
16 would be very helpful.
17 MR. SAENZ: Yes, I was going to address the
18 industry standards, especially on the Mexican side,
19 they -- they've got certain hours that they -- they would
20 like to do the business. We've been trying to extend the
21 hours of operation of the bridge and -- and it hasn't
22 worked so just knowing the culture and -- and the industry
23 on the Mexican side.
24 MR. BOMBA: That's a good idea. Culture and
25 business practices or standard business practices that
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1 would be a good one.
2 Others?
3 Goal 8. Enhance financial gateway- and
4 trade-related transportation planning. Our objectives are
5 encourage binat- -- binational participation in the
6 identification of border and trade transportation
7 priorities and investment strategies engaged by national
8 participation during the development of transportation
9 plans along the Texas-Mexico border and support and
10 encourage multistate cross-border trade-related
11 transportation planning between state and local
12 governments.
13 Suggestions?
14 MS. MAYS: I think this is where one of the
15 comments that, Sam, you had brought up earlier, you know,
16 really looking at consistent -- I have a note here that
17 one of the recommendations of the Secretary of St- --
18 State, it could be an objective is consistent data
19 collection and analysis among all border states. I think
20 Matthew alluded to this earlier that each of the border
21 regions or crossings are collecting data differently,
22 they're analyzing it differently so I think in the
23 planning process here we need to really, you know, aspire
24 to have consistent data collection and that will help us
25 do consistent analysis and maybe timeliness of the data so
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1 that it's -- we're not using dated data to be able help in
2 the decision-making process and then that goes into kind
3 of the -- the forecasting, the projections that you talked
4 about earlier. I think this is where that would really be
5 very helpful as an objective but also as a recommendation
6 later.
7 MR. BOMBA: Any other thoughts on this?
8 MR. CASCOS: Go ahead.
9 MR. BOMBA: And our final goal by goal
10 number 9. Compete more effectively for funding. So to
11 develop a sound and comprehensive investment plan for the
12 border. As has been stated earlier in this process, the
13 state and federal government are expecting a return from
14 their investment, not only in economic development, but
15 they want to have performance measures that demonstrate
16 the projects were worthwhile. So we need to, as I said,
17 focus on a comprehensive plan.
18 And then identifies opportunities for
19 inno- -- innovative and alternate funding sources and
20 those could be both public and private sector or some
21 combination of the two.
22 Any other ideas about the funding? Judge?
23 MS. ESCOBAR: The -- for goal number 9,
24 would the overarching goal be to -- to draw more money to
25 border corridors and communities?
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1 MR. BOMBA: It would be. But the funding
2 sources could be varied so it could -- obviously the
3 federal money is the best to get because it comes from the
4 outside, but it could also be private money through public
5 and private partnerships or through other -- some of it
6 may be through your --
7 MS. ESCOBAR: So I -- I'm sorry. Excuse me.
8 So my recommendation would be not -- I mean obviously we
9 do want to be more competitive but the ultimate goal is we
10 want more money.
11 MR. BOMBA: Exactly.
12 MS. ESCOBAR: And so I think we should just
13 state that outright, draw more funding or attract more
14 funding or draw more funding to border corridors and
15 communities.
16 MR. VALE: In this lineup of successful
17 competition budget in Washington, it's not just we want
18 it --
19 Sam Vale.
20 -- it is a process of understanding how do
21 you compete for funding at the federal level and it is a
22 skill. It's not something that you just justify. It's
23 good to be justified, but if you don't know how to do it
24 in a skillful way, you still don't get it.
25 MS. ESCOBAR: Right. But the goal would not
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1 be just to compete for it. The ultimate goal --
2 MR. VALE: Is to secure it.
3 MS. ESCOBAR: -- is to secure it. Right.
4 MR. VALE: Yeah. Success- -- successfully
5 securing it is a required funding for the innovative and
6 investment --
7 MR. CASCOS: You-all have to speak up, we
8 don't hear --
9 MS. MAYS: Use the microphone, please.
10 MR. LOVE: This is John Love. I agree with
11 what you're saying. In this instance I like the word
12 "compete" because we're competing with all other states
13 for federal funds so -- and last week that two
14 applications for the state of Texas were submitted for FAS
15 (phonetic) and they both agree and they both all have
16 gotten turned down. We didn't get any money. So we are
17 ineffectively competing for money so I kind of like the
18 word.
19 MS. MAYS: Yeah, but I think to the Judge's
20 point, maybe make it broader as a goal by making an
21 objective that's where we can add, you know, compete
22 effectively for federal funds.
23 MR. LOVE: To successfully compete.
24 MS. MAYS: Yeah. You know, and you also
25 have to really know how to, which again can part of the
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1 objective so, you know, might want to make the goal
2 broader, but then the objectives be very specific on the
3 intentions or how we'd be able to secure or draw federal
4 funds or draw funding, period. Because it's not just --
5 we're not just talking about federal funds, we're talking
6 about state, we're talking about federal, we're talking
7 about local as well.
8 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: And also private
9 dollars.
10 MS. MAYS: Yes.
11 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: If we're asking
12 private companies to participate, they have to reallocate
13 their assets from whatever it is that they were planning
14 on doing.
15 MR. CASCOS: Are we implying that the state
16 of Texas should be developing a sound and comprehensive
17 investment plan? Is that what we are -- is that what we
18 are implying there? Or who is specifically going to
19 develop this or -- and who is going to identify these
20 opportunities? Is it the state of Texas? Is it TxDOT?
21 Is it this committee? Who is it?
22 MS. MAYS: All of the above.
23 MR. CASCOS: We need to identify that so --
24 so we don't have somebody saying, "Well, I thought you
25 were going to do it."
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1 MR. BOMBA: Right.
2 MR. CASCOS: "I thought you were going to do
3 it." No, no, no, I tell them -- I'd like to see a little
4 bit more definitive, you know, obs- -- you know, comments
5 as to whom is supposed to do this.
6 MR. BOMBA: Who's responsible.
7 MR. CASCOS: Yeah. I mean who's going to
8 this? Because it is -- it is competitive.
9 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Secretary.
10 MR. CASCOS: Yeah, yeah. And it ain't going
11 to be me. No, it'll be -- but, you know, we -- we -- I
12 mean we also have to be pragmatic of the fact that we live
13 and we're going through a very -- it's a political
14 environment and in Texas being, you know, what Texas is
15 and what we have at the leadership at Washington,
16 sometimes they don't -- you know, they don't see eye to
17 eye. So we got to somehow convince everybody this is not
18 a political deal, this is an economic deal and that's what
19 we're going to have to identify a little bit better. You
20 know, I think that the federal, local, state, you know,
21 and private sector all have to come together. I think
22 what the mayor mentioned a few minutes ago, if you want to
23 get the private sector involved, they've got to know what
24 their return on investment is going to be. It's business.
25 And that's what we have to somehow tie into somehow.
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1 They're going to get a four percent return or an
2 eight percent return. We have to be able to come up
3 with -- with something -- because no one in this room
4 who's in the investment side or in business is going to
5 invest anything unless you're going to get a little bit
6 better return than that .01 percent -- you need to fix
7 that, Gerry, on -- on CDs. Okay? You know 01 percent
8 return on investment, you know -- and that's I mean --
9 that is being pragmatic. I mean we have to kind of get
10 out of this political box, so to speak, and kind of deal
11 with business as best we can if we're going to bring in
12 the private sector. If it's all -- you know, if it's all
13 tax dollars, then maybe you don't have that latitude.
14 Yes, ma'am.
15 MS. MAINWARING: Brenda Mainwaring with
16 Union Pacific Railroad, private sector investment. You
17 know, we've invested three and a half billion dollars in
18 Texas and I know BNSF would have similar numbers just in
19 the last five or six years and so it's not necessary -- we
20 do our own calculations on ROI. To -- to Mr. Vale's
21 point, we do obviously calculate future business. Part of
22 what we need is the border communities' understanding on
23 having a bigger picture but also removal of obstruction.
24 We have a lot of challenges where it's very difficult to
25 make investment. And to the extent that this group can
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1 set priorities and goals that will help us eliminate those
2 ob- -- those obstructions, that is also extremely valuable
3 to private industry.
4 MR. CASCOS: Can you give me an example of
5 what an obstruction would be?
6 MS. MAINWARING: I think I'd rather not in
7 this group.
8 MR. CASCOS: I can't fix it if I don't know
9 what it is. Okay. E-mail me privately.
10 And I think that's a valid point, but I
11 think some of those challenges that you have are not so
12 much the federal level, I think they're at the local level
13 and quite possibly the state level. Right? That's what I
14 would think.
15 MS. MAINWARING: Yes. Very much the case,
16 yes.
17 MR. CASCOS: Okay. That's what I thought.
18 Okay. All right.
19 MR. SCHWEBEL: Mr. Secretary, also I --
20 following up on the judge's thoughts, comments earlier.
21 Would we not consider in the actual competing for funding
22 for the benefit of the state and the country or for the
23 benefit of the all, you know, incorporate some of that
24 language in there because as we compete for funding, it's
25 not just competing for funding for -- not just Texas
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1 border but for the benefit, who's going to win -- who's
2 going to benefit from this? I think the more we talk
3 about in everything that we do, it's -- the entire nation
4 benefits from sound investment plan for the Texas-Mexico
5 border.
6 MR. CASCOS: And I think that's part of the
7 challenge is conveying that message away from the border
8 and maybe away from Texas. Af- -- after his presentation
9 we're going to show you this map that was -- that I had
10 indicated that most of us have seen already, but -- but
11 hopefully it reemphasizes that as far as where these
12 trucks are going as they're leaving our -- our land ports
13 of entry from The Valley, Laredo and in El Paso, I think
14 it's going to be impressive to you to see what's
15 happening. Okay.
16 MS. MAYS: Secretary, let me just answer
17 your question on who would be --
18 Michael, can you go back to that slide that
19 talks about, you know, who would -- who would develop the
20 investment plan. One of things that we're going to be
21 doing -- probably see it in Juan Villa's presentation is,
22 you know, we're actually going to be identifying the roles
23 and responsibilities so we're going to be tying some of
24 these concepts you see here when we go to the
25 recommendation, who -- identify who -- what stakeholder is
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1 responsible for what. Because again you've charged us
2 from day one to have an action plan. You cannot have an
3 action plan without attaching, you know, who is
4 responsible and some timeline as well. You know, going to
5 attach some timeline interim, you know, mid-term and
6 long-term, you know, recommendations as we move forward.
7 So a lot of what we said in the past we're kind of
8 following back, but we just haven't gotten to that. Juan
9 Villa's going to show us some of that later in his
10 presentation.
11 MR. BOMBA: Okay. At this point I think
12 we've shown you -- do we want to go back to the mission
13 statement or do we want to --
14 MR. CASCOS: Yeah.
15 MR. BOMBA: Okay.
16 MR. CASCOS: Suggestion by the judge.
17 MS. ESCOBAR: Okay. So taking all these
18 goals into account here -- and this is a suggestion, my
19 feelings won't he hurt if folks don't like it. Influence
20 and implement economic development strategy and public
21 policy that facilitates border trade, creates efficient
22 corridors and enhances the state and national economy.
23 MR. CASCOS: Is that for that one there?
24 MS. ESCOBAR: For the mission statement,
25 yeah.
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1 MR. CASCOS: I like it.
2 MR. BOMBA: I think what we'll do is
3 we'll -- we'll type it up on the screen --
4 MS. ESCOBAR: Right. And then you-all
5 can --
6 MR. BOMBA: -- then everyone can see it.
7 MS. ESCOBAR: -- do with it what you want
8 with it.
9 MR. CASCOS: Okay. Whi- -- while they're
10 doing that --
11 MR. BOMBA: Did anybody else have any other
12 comments on the -- the goals and objectives we presented
13 that they didn't have a chance to provide earlier? Any
14 other feedback?
15 I also want to mention that this isn't the
16 only chance to give us feedback. You can e-mail Caroline
17 or my point of contact if have any ideas about how we can
18 change things or just sort of general comments about the
19 mission and the vision statements as well as the goals and
20 objectives. If you could send those to her, you know,
21 she'll feed them back to us and then you'll be seeing all
22 this again because once we -- we get all your feedback, we
23 massage it and present it back to you and make this sort
24 of an iterative process until everyone's happy with this,
25 what's prepared.
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1 Do we have a team of people putting this
2 together?
3 MS. MAYS: No, we're going to show the maps
4 while they're --
5 MR. BOMBA: Oh, the maps okay.
6 MS. MAYS: -- and then come back. Yeah,
7 save us a little bit of time.
8 MR. CASCOS: Here, this is Caroline's show
9 and tell.
10 MS. MAYS: Well, a lot of you have seen
11 this, but for the benefit of the judge and the mayor, as
12 part of the freight mobility plan that some of you were
13 involved in, we asked the consultants to kind of give us
14 an idea of how trade flows in Texas. And they took --
15 they took -- you know, in each of the border regions, it's
16 not crossing specific so it's not one crossing, but it is
17 to -- this is El Paso so they took 2,000 trucks they had
18 GPS and they followed them over a seven-day period.
19 So this is day one. So day two, truck from
20 El Paso, Laredo could make it all the way to like New York
21 in -- in two days. So by day three you see the movement.
22 Day five they're covering the entire nation and day -- day
23 seven. So you see, when we talk about the national impact
24 of the border regions, this is what it is and, you know,
25 analysts are using this to really communicate the impact
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1 of the border region to the rest of the nation.
2 And what I also want to point out, look at
3 the movement between El Paso and Laredo where we're
4 talking by intraborder regional movements. And someone
5 asked me, "Why would they do that?" And what happens is
6 sometimes a truck brings things into El Paso and their
7 consolidation point is Laredo so then the truck -- another
8 truck take -- that truck takes you to Laredo and it's
9 consolidated in a truck that, you know, gets moved into --
10 you know, into New York, et cetera. And you're going to
11 see kind of the same with Laredo and The Valley. So
12 there's that intraregional movement that we're not
13 capturing, we're not looking at the corridors that are
14 connecting these border regions because it's happening on
15 a larger and larger scale. So, again, you know, mayor and
16 judge who use this, you know, over and over again, this is
17 El Paso and I'll show you, you know, look --
18 MR. CASCOS: The darker is the more --
19 MS. MAYS: Yes, the thicker -- the thicker.
20 Yeah, the thicker it is, the more the trucks. So this is
21 Laredo and day one the truck from Laredo, you can see how
22 far it goes almost all the way to -- to Michigan. You
23 know, day two same thing. Day three, five and day seven.
24 And again you see a lot of the movement, you know, for
25 Laredo. It's mostly in the eastern part of the country.
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1 MR. CASCOS: And El Paso --
2 MS. MAYS: Yeah, El Paso's a little bit more
3 to the west. But, you know, Laredo, you know, mid to
4 eastern part of the country and then -- but you see a lot,
5 again, the intraregional movement. Laredo and The Valley,
6 there's lot of movement between Laredo and The Valley.
7 And essentially a lot of those are moving probably from
8 warehouse to warehouse, you know, and being consolidated
9 and being moved out. So, you know, these relationships
10 between that -- for instance let's say a tomato's coming
11 through Laredo, probably has to go to a warehouse in, you
12 know -- in The Valley, you know, closer to The Valley to
13 be stored for a couple days before a truck comes and, you
14 know, consolidates and picks it up and takes it, you know,
15 points north. So those are really critical. But when you
16 look at the corridors, you know, look at your I-35 and,
17 you know, you're seeing a lot of movement, seeing a lot
18 within Laredo and the ports Houston, Corpus Cristi but
19 also Brownsville. So there's a lot we talked about.
20 Gerry pointed out a multimodal nature so a
21 lot of this has to do with that movement as well,
22 movements from the port to the border, border to the ports
23 again because goods are being shuffled all over the place,
24 this gives you an idea of that movement.
25 And then for Brownsville it's kind of
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1 similar thing, you know, you look at it -- the movement
2 again, you know, a lot of relationships between, you know,
3 the Brownsville, The Valley and Laredo, but also El Paso
4 and points west, but again lot of it is moving, you know,
5 on towards the east coast of the United States. So
6 this -- this gives you -- really telling the border story,
7 you know, where this is going, it's not staying at the
8 border.
9 MR. CASCOS: Put it all together.
10 MS. RAMIREZ: Caroline --
11 MS. MAYS: Yes.
12 MS. RAMIREZ: -- Julie Ramirez with Progreso
13 Bridge. I really like your show and tell. I'd like to
14 have to a copy of it even though we're not mentioned
15 anywhere in there so far, but I know that we're there and
16 so I'd like to have a copy of it. It's a great graph.
17 MS. MAYS: Yeah, absolutely I can send this
18 to the -- to the entire committee.
19 MS. RAMIREZ: I thought you were going to,
20 but I'm not sure --
21 MS. MAYS: Yes, you will.
22 MS. RAMIREZ: -- and I don't remember so I
23 don't have that and I'd like to have a copy.
24 Thank you.
25 MS. MAYS: Yeah, you bet.
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1 MR. LOVE: Caroline, I would like to comment
2 on it. In all these maps that you just got through
3 showing, you see goods coming from El Paso and then some
4 of them are breaking towards the west like Brownsville,
5 Laredo. Why is that?
6 MS. MAYS: Coming from the west to Laredo?
7 MR. LOVE: No, no, no. It comes up from
8 Laredo and then they go to California.
9 MS. MAYS: Yeah.
10 MR. LOVE: Why would they not take another
11 route instead of trying to go through that bottleneck of
12 Laredo and then head west? Why don't they come through
13 El Paso or, you know, my favorite --
14 MS. MAYS: Okay. So -- so --
15 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I want to go back to
16 El Paso.
17 MS. MAYS: Okay. Stop -- stop for a second.
18 Yeah. So this is El Paso. So here El Paso, you see
19 El Paso has a broader kind of reach a lot of west coast,
20 you know, movement because, one, stuff coming -- you know,
21 this is trucks leaving Laredo so they're going -- actually
22 going to the port of -- yeah, yeah, El Paso. So they're
23 moving from El Paso going to port of LA, Long Beach, some
24 of these are exports. Remember that manufactured in
25 Mexico are coming through El Paso and going to the west
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1 coast, you know, and going to the population centers
2 there, but also connectivity to the west coast ports. And
3 then you see a lot going to the hinterlands, you know, a
4 lot of those are just for, you know, consumptions in some
5 of this -- these regions.
6 But to your question why they come through
7 Laredo, is proximity, it's border proximity. What's being
8 manufactured in Monterrey is not necessarily going to go
9 all the way to El Paso so that's kind of the geography
10 of -- of trade and movement is proximity to where the
11 manufacturing is taking place or the produce that being
12 picked up, et cetera. And then also ease of getting to
13 that point of entry because the cost is how soon -- how
14 fast can I get it from the point of production across the
15 border and then go points wherever it needs to go. So
16 that's why Laredo you see a lot of movement. The
17 congestion in Laredo is not really the biggest issue when
18 it comes to trade, it's the ease and the proximity.
19 Laredo is location, location, location. And then ease of
20 crossing in Laredo, a lot of brokers are going to send the
21 stuff through Laredo and they're familiar with it and
22 proximity, you know, because a lot of electronics go
23 through -- through Laredo. So again you have -- each of
24 the border point of entries' regions have kind of a niche,
25 you know, commodities. Laredo is well known for
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1 electronics, car parts, et cetera. They're going to come
2 through that so then that's why you see it going to other
3 parts of the country but -- because that's where, you
4 know, for instance, you know, Chrysler or Toyota, most of
5 their crossing is going to happen in Laredo, but then it
6 had to go, you know, points forward and then you're going
7 see those movements.
8 MR. CASCOS: I think the other -- the
9 other -- I think that's -- that's a great question, John.
10 Also we don't know what the infrastructure looks like on
11 the Mexican side too. You know, they may not be able to
12 cross as efficiently, they don't want to go all the way
13 to, you know, Baja California, or cross there.
14 MR. LOVE: Well, that's what I was alluding
15 to --
16 MR. CASCOS: Yeah.
17 MR. LOVE: -- because it seems like it's a
18 cost factor. Is it -- is it cheaper to go through Laredo
19 and deal with that congestion, get out there for what's
20 the infrastructure in Mexico.
21 MR. CASCOS: Yeah, could be.
22 MR. LOVE: Yeah.
23 MR. CASCOS: Now, one of the -- one of the
24 issues that -- that I've been -- well, that my office has
25 been speaking with TxDOT is on -- on potentially new
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1 bridges and enhancements of bridges. And what I'm -- what
2 I'm -- what we're trying to do is making sure that we
3 collaborate on the Mexican side and it does no good for us
4 to have the best infrastructure lines on this side of the
5 border if the Mexican side doesn't have the infrastructure
6 in place to get their goods and services to that bridge.
7 So that's part -- that's part of the --
8 Now, one component that's missing that --
9 and I don't know how we're going to be able to do it.
10 It'd be interesting to see from a point in Mexico their
11 truck traffic and how -- how much of their tra- -- you
12 know, having a similar, you know, map like that coming
13 from different parts of Mexico and seeing how those trucks
14 are coming here. We really don't -- yeah, we really don't
15 know. But that's a missing component.
16 MR. LOVE: Is there a comparable or an
17 organization in Mexico to us?
18 MR. CASCOS: Not as efficient as we are
19 but -- I don't know. But we're working on it.
20 MS. MAYS: Yeah.
21 MR. CASCOS: I mean, you know, we have to
22 continue that dialogue with Mexico and we're doing that
23 and it's -- you know, now we're getting like two or three
24 different, you know, gubernatorial administrations, new
25 mayors, so we're going to have to like --
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1 MR. LOVE: We got our own in other words.
2 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Mexico tends to go
3 too much like promotion for their states and not look at
4 the rest of the national traffic. That's one of the
5 issues that we have a hard time with.
6 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes, I have a
7 question here. Is this just northbound -- northbound that
8 you've taken?
9 MS. MAYS: Yes.
10 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Because there's also
11 southbound.
12 MS. MAYS: Yes.
13 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: And it's quite a bit.
14 It probably looks just as red because you have all raw
15 materials going through all the ports, airports in Dallas,
16 Houston, San Antonio.
17 MS. MAYS: Yeah.
18 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: And the sea ports too
19 affected so I mean this is traffic going both ways. Yeah,
20 this is just leaving and going, you know, yeah, northbound
21 or east/west. Not inbound going, you know, southbound
22 to -- to the border regions. This was just going out.
23 Yeah.
24 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: And that's again
25 another thing that we probably going follow up, you know,
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1 several things looking at what's coming to the border from
2 around the U.S. so that can be done too, but, you know,
3 that requires study, but then also looking at the Mexican
4 side, what's coming in from Mexico. That's a big
5 challenge. That's one of the things, you know, we're
6 working with the Mexicans right now, we're ramping up our
7 coordination efforts with them to be able to communicate
8 this to them and see if, you know, we work through the
9 joint working committee JWC which has the federal partners
10 Mexicans and U.S. and then the border states within, you
11 know, the border region and this is some of the things we
12 going to be trying to discuss with them. And one of the
13 goals we talked about binational planning, this is exactly
14 what we're talking about. We have a lot of information on
15 our end, but on the Mexican side, we need to be able to
16 have similar so that we can have more of a U.S.-Mexico map
17 where we could show the connectivity between the two
18 nations and probably with Canada as well. But again we
19 had on our side and not on the Mexican side so hopefully
20 that's something that, you know, with time we can be able
21 to, you know, get to that point. Not sure what data they
22 collect, how they collect the data. This is GPS and this
23 is actually funded by federal highway. Federal highway is
24 funded, you know, through US -- TS funded this. So can
25 Mexico do something similar? So again those are dialogues
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1 that needs to take place.
2 MR. VALE: Is part of that --
3 Sam Vale.
4 Is part of the competing in Washington, you
5 have to be able to demonstrate cost benefits and who's
6 getting the benefits and the cost. And if you can't put
7 that all together -- stuff that comes from Canada -- when
8 Canada does something, only 25 percent of the parts are
9 from the U.S. When Mexico does something, 40 to
10 50 percent of the parts are from the U.S. That -- those
11 parts are made all over the U.S. So we need to also be
12 able to demonstrate who is exporting from the U.S. into
13 Mexico which creates the empty truck to come back. And
14 all these things go together, whether it's a rail
15 shipment -- they don't like shipping empty -- empty
16 containers around. So you -- it's a -- it's a big
17 strategy there, but that's how you sell in Washington on
18 being able to touch congressmen in every district and say,
19 "This is what you get from this."
20 MR. CASCOS: Sam, I think that -- I've kind
21 of said this many times that we know what we have here and
22 we know it's positive. Right? And it's conveying that
23 message to the outside, those congressmen, those U.S.
24 senators from other states, you show them something like
25 this and espec- -- whether it's El Paso, The Valley or
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1 Laredo, you know, those are the people that -- that we
2 need to be talking to. Every -- every U.S. senator, every
3 congressman that has a red going through their state or
4 stopping in their state, that's what we need to do
5 somehow. I'm not in the -- the lobby business, but -- but
6 that is what we need to convey -- not only to our local
7 representative which they know this. Now help them, help
8 them convey those messages to their -- you know, to their
9 colleagues in D.C. and in Austin of course.
10 MR. SAENZ: I had a question for Caroline.
11 The study does that -- the way it was structured, was it
12 once they deliver, then they stop monitoring the truck
13 or -- or, you know, because they could have delivered
14 someplace else and they pick up a cargo that really didn't
15 come from Mexico and they then took it up. Do we know the
16 specifics, the parameters of the study?
17 MS. MAYS: No, no. This was just following
18 the same trucks for seven days so if they went and dropped
19 something in -- in Dallas and then continued or picked
20 something in Dallas and continued, it would show up here
21 so it doesn't stop --
22 MR. SAENZ: It doesn't show the Mexican --
23 you know, the product coming from Mexico and then to -- to
24 point of delivery.
25 MS. MAYS: Well, this here shows where
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1 they're going, where the delivery --
2 MR. SAENZ: Yeah, but --
3 MS. MAYS: -- but it doesn't stop -- let's
4 say a truck -- you know, five trucks went and delivered
5 everything in Dallas, it's not going to stop there because
6 they're following them for seven days. So if they picked
7 up loads in Dallas and they kept going to Michigan, it's
8 going to show that.
9 MR. SAENZ: You know the point that I'm
10 trying to make is that the Mexican -- you know, where the
11 product coming from Mexico may have ended in San Antonio
12 and then from San Antonio they picked up some -- some more
13 product and moved it someplace else and --
14 MR. CASCOS: You know, this is strictly
15 based on days, not on product delivery. It's based on
16 wherever that truck -- where did it go for seven days. So
17 you really can't tell like, well, they stopped in Dallas
18 and picked up another load and go on. It's just
19 specifically on that.
20 MR. SAENZ: Okay. But the point I'm trying
21 to make is, you know, the product could have come from
22 someplace else, not -- not from Mexico.
23 MS. MAYS: No, the product they're leaving
24 from the border so they're picking a load from the border.
25 They're not going to go north empty. None of the trucks
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1 that --
2 MR. SAENZ: No, no, but to a certain point
3 that -- yeah, they do pick up -- you know, they're
4 bringing product from Mexico obviously, but maybe they --
5 they took it San Antonio and then from San Antonio they --
6 they took a different load someplace else and --
7 MS. MAYS: Yeah and like the Secretary was
8 saying, this wasn't based on commodity. This was based on
9 the trip itself.
10 MR. SAENZ: Where the truck was.
11 MS. MAYS: Yeah, where that truck was.
12 Origin and kind of destination, not really on the
13 commodity or the product they were carrying. Yeah, so
14 this was just demonstrating the reach of a truck that
15 left, you know, the border region where it will end up
16 with seven days.
17 MR. VALE: Bill of lading will answer that
18 question.
19 MR. DRUSINA: Ed Drusina. Thank you,
20 Secretary.
21 The question -- I know it's come up before
22 in other sessions that we need to continue to keep in mind
23 is what was mentioned a minute ago is the infrastructure
24 in Mexico and how they're planning their infrastructure
25 and how it complements what we're talking about here
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1 today. Is it indeed in lockstep with what Mexico is
2 doing? And having them here in sessions such as this to
3 see what our -- our problems are and what we're trying to
4 develop from time to time -- not every meeting but from
5 time to time -- and having input from them even though
6 they -- you're right, they're not as perhaps as for along
7 and sophisticated in how they're analyzing, but they're
8 pretty darn good. I have seen some enormous steps forward
9 in Mexico on the businesses that we deal with along the
10 border. So I think that would be a -- a step that we
11 should consider and I'll include that in some of my
12 comments I send out.
13 MR. CASCOS: Yeah. And I think that the --
14 the committee that Mayor Saenz chairs, the Good Neighbor
15 committee that -- that is also another -- another avenue
16 for -- for speaking with our Mexican counterparts. And,
17 you know, as -- as he has these meetings, these are the
18 types of things that you may want to convey with them that
19 they can also give us an update of where they are with
20 their infrastructure. Okay?
21 MR. DRUSINA: Thank you.
22 MR. CASCOS: Mayor.
23 MR. LEESER: You made a comment which was --
24 when we -- we can talk to each other and we understand, we
25 understand the importance, but we met with Senator Cornyn,
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1 Congressman Hurd and Congressman O'Rourke and we actually
2 made a request. We met at the bridges with Mr. Mancha and
3 Mr. Jauregui and we said, "You know, we want to go to
4 Washington and we want to sit in front of your colleagues
5 and we want to show them these maps and show them the
6 importance of the border trade and what a border community
7 means to the rest of the country and have a roundtable
8 conversation. Really answer their questions." We don't
9 want to go to Washington and talk to the Congressman Hurd
10 and O'Rourke because they get it and the Senator gets it.
11 So we've made a request in our next trip to Washington,
12 they've made a commitment to us that they will have their
13 colleagues sit with us and actually air their concerns.
14 We can answer their questions and show them the importance
15 of border trade.
16 MS. GARZA-REYES: Also going with that,
17 Mayor. Cindy Garza-Reyes. Sorry. City of Pharr, we've
18 been very fortunate that we have been able to host 28
19 members of Congress since January and a lot of that is due
20 to movement within our leadership and also working hand in
21 hand with our federal members in terms of getting their
22 colleagues down. And with that we make sure that when we
23 bring them down -- or when they're able to come down, we
24 literally take them through all our small roads -- our
25 community roads so they can see our freight traffic. And
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1 it's astounding in terms of seeing their reaction to it.
2 You're talking about some members that sit on
3 transportation committee, they sit on the AG committee,
4 but yet they've never been to a border town before or seen
5 a port of entry. And so we're literally able to show them
6 that. At the same time, they get an actual tour on the
7 CPB side so they get their official tour. And so by the
8 time they come to the city of Pharr side, we're able to
9 really talk to them not only about the need in terms of
10 connectivity for our bridge but also as a region as a
11 whole. And the one question that they always ask at the
12 end that we can never answer is, "Well, how much of this
13 is coming to my congressional district?" Because
14 unfortunately we don't have those numbers and those
15 numbers are very difficult to get. But at the same time,
16 we're able to get them to understand that we might not
17 know how much is coming into your district, but in terms
18 of your grocery stores and what you're seeing, if you
19 wonder why your lettuce is brown or why your avocados are
20 about to -- are about to go bad, it's because of what's
21 happening here on the border. This is where it's starting
22 to go into your Safeways and so on. And at the end they
23 finally get it and it clicks to them the importance of the
24 Texas-Mexico border. So at the same time, you know, the
25 ports of entries who -- I mean everybody is of course
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1 looking for infrastructure money and fast-laning the
2 competitive route, it seems like that's what everybody is
3 going to apply for.
4 We need to be very cognizant in terms of
5 this last cycle of funding that went through. We need to
6 see where that funding went to. There's large projects in
7 the northeast that don't even have port of entries, but
8 the but the funding went there. Two projects went to one
9 point of entry in Washington state. Why is that? What
10 are they doing that we're not doing with our projects? I
11 think it's really important as a group that we all
12 understand that in terms of moving forward so that our
13 Texas infrastructure projects are a priority as well.
14 Thank you.
15 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Thank you,
16 Mr. Secretary.
17 MR. CASCOS: All right. We got to move on.
18 One more question.
19 MR. CANTU: I just have -- just obviously to
20 have as a point of reference here and in agreement with
21 what -- with what Ms. Garza-Reyes is bringing up. You
22 know, the city of El Paso is in the same boat, as we see
23 our ports continue to grow up -- just in the last year,
24 we've seen about a 19 percent increase in commercial
25 traffic that is flowing through there. And the funding
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1 that is needed in order for its continued expansion just
2 the state of Texas through TxDOT, we received about a
3 $5.3 million grant there in CBI moneys, but we need to see
4 more of that. And the question that I have for Caroline
5 is in reference to these types of graphs that are being
6 provided to us in this raw data, are those specific to the
7 actual smaller communities? I know that Ms. Ramirez
8 brought up the question as far as it not being detailed to
9 like let's say the Prog- -- Progreso International Bridge.
10 Are there studies that can help the smaller communities,
11 not just the larger ports of entries, also have that type
12 of talking point with our congressional delegations and
13 federal delegations as well. Is there such a study that
14 has been done from the ports that are pretty much on the
15 grow as -- I mean as Eagle Pass is?
16 MS. MAYS: No. With -- with this -- again
17 this is what I showed was done on the context of the
18 freight which was a huge study and zeroed in on the border
19 a little bit but not to that granular in detail. But I
20 think that's one of the recommendations that come -- come
21 out of this report of this group is that we need to start
22 doing some of this granular studies, looking at each of
23 the port of entries and we have some ideas on some of the
24 things that we can do, but I think a recommendation, as
25 the Secretary mentioned here, to your point we need to
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1 start looking at, you know, really how do we look at the
2 different border crossings, not only what are presented
3 here which is inside the region.
4 MR. CANTU: And I believe that that's key
5 because as those smaller ports are growing, you know, we
6 need to keep up with that demand and the local communities
7 obviously cannot sustain the -- the growth that is coming
8 without the help of both the state and federal -- federal
9 government.
10 MR. CASCOS: Send that recommendation in as
11 well. You know, keep in mind we have 28 ports of entries.
12 Not all of them are truck related but, nonetheless, you
13 know, they're all important crossings. So if anybody
14 has -- like Julie, same thing -- you know send that
15 rec- -- you know, we recommend that. Maybe -- maybe
16 collaborate, you know, with -- with the mayor and you-all
17 can do it together.
18 MS. RAMIREZ: We'd be happy to do it.
19 MR. CASCOS: Thanks.
20 MR. SAENZ: From the standpoint of funding,
21 may I just -- just mention just in Laredo alone, duties is
22 the -- these were moneys collected by the Customs' people,
23 the port of Laredo, $271 billion are collected annually.
24 I was hoping maybe we could use that as a -- as a way to
25 impress Washington that some of that ought to come back --
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1 at least two, three percent -- to those ports entry, you
2 know, for infrastructure or just making them more
3 efficient.
4 MR. CASCOS: Send that in.
5 MR. SAENZ: Okay. Thank you.
6 MR. CASCOS: Make you guys work, man. You
7 have something to say, put it in writing and make a
8 recommendation.
9 All right. Let's move on.
10 Are you ready?
11 MR. BOMBA: I think our next presenter will
12 be Juan Villa.
13 MR. CASCOS: Okay.
14 MR. VILLA: Good morning. I think going
15 back to the previous presentation that Michael was doing,
16 we captured your comments and we have them and we'll send
17 them to you in the -- with the minutes for -- from this
18 meeting. Thank you, Judge, for your recommendation. I
19 think we have it there so we'll -- we'll send it to
20 everyone.
21 So we're running out of time, but basically
22 what I would like to present to you here is a paper we did
23 on the what is the border. This is something that we
24 discussed last time in Dallas and Sam Vale was, you know,
25 saying this is a system for ports of entry, not one single
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1 one. I will not go into the first time again because
2 we're running late. You have the presentation on your
3 folders so you can take a look to it. What is important
4 in following Secretary's comments, this is a workshop so
5 we're going to ask you some input from you directly.
6 So what I would like to discuss is this list
7 of challenges and this is something that we again
8 discussed last time when we met in -- in Dallas. So again
9 we have a list of those. And what I would like for you to
10 do is analyze and read them very quickly and give us some
11 feedback. Are we missing any of these key challenges that
12 we have been discussing not only today but in the previous
13 meetings?
14 Any suggestions of another challenge that
15 it's important for -- for your operations at the border
16 and also inland?
17 MR. CASCOS: Hey, Juan --
18 MR. VILLA: Yes.
19 MR. CASCOS: -- I just ask, I don't know
20 what hinterland is. Everybody seems to know what that
21 this except me. I think it sounds great. I thought you
22 meant winter land, but you really want to put in
23 parenthesis maybe a short what that is because not
24 everybody listed in the transportation field may -- may
25 not know what that is.
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1 MS. MAYS: Yeah, I just said to change it to
2 the rest of the state and the nation, the rest of Texas
3 and the nation.
4 MR. VILLA: Okay.
5 MS. MAYS: Yeah, because we'll be using that
6 be consistent because wordings matter so --
7 MR. VILLA: Right. And actually if you
8 just -- it's a -- it's a termin- -- terminology that it's
9 used at ports basically is what the -- what the -- beyond
10 the port, the land that is beyond the port that is serving
11 that particular port.
12 MR. CASCOS: You could no man's land and I
13 would have understood that.
14 MR. SAENZ: I was going to mention,
15 Mr. Secretary, maybe the political ramifications of NAFTA
16 and that sort the thing. I know there's -- there's a lot
17 of political rhetoric, but it -- but it -- people do pay
18 close attention to -- especially people on the border on
19 the Mexican side, they are concerned, they're nervous
20 about it and I don't know how specifically whether we
21 should address it or not, but obviously if -- if there's
22 changes to NAFTA, maybe at some point someone needs to
23 know what -- what that means and identify it, define it
24 and, you know, get familiar with it because if there are
25 going to be changes, I think, you know, obviously the
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1 state of Texas needs to be at the forefront and the border
2 communities as well.
3 MR. CASCOS: Let's keep in mind that as we
4 work this -- this document, it is a working document and
5 it should be a living and breathing -- and it's going to
6 change, you know, as political climates change, we may
7 have to make some adjustments somewhere. But that's a
8 good point, Mayor, yes.
9 MS. MAYS: Yeah, I think -- I think, Juan,
10 contrary to the mayor's point is kind of I don't see it on
11 here the lack of understanding of the border and its role
12 and importance to, you know, trade, you know, to the rest
13 of the nation so I think we need to include that in there.
14 MR. VILLA: Yes.
15 MR. SAENZ: And also too from our standpoint
16 and we've been talking about it in Laredo, as far as
17 border cities, border regions, any type of trade is good
18 for us. Right? Beyond our -- beyond the border area, it
19 may impact the nation differently. But -- but strictly
20 talking border lands, TPP, NAFTA, any type of trade and
21 exchange of goods is good for the border area. That's --
22 I think that's the consensus that we've reached in our
23 area.
24 MR. VILLA: So probably the challenge is the
25 lack of knowledge of potential changes in trade
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1 agreements, something like that.
2 MR. VALE: Those are treatyisms, that's a
3 complicated process. You'll have plenty of time.
4 MR. VILLA: Yes.
5 MR. VALE: You just don't say, "We're going
6 to get rid of this, I don't care what anybody says."
7 They're treaties.
8 MR. VILLA: Yes.
9 MR. VALE: Requires a process.
10 MR. CASCOS: John.
11 MR. LOVE: Yeah, John Love.
12 I was reading this white paper and I kind of
13 understood what you were trying to do and the word
14 "border" does suggest in a lot of people's mind a specific
15 line and so I thought that maybe we might be able to refer
16 to the area beyond the border, whatever that -- whatever
17 that is, whether it's just the counties or if it's all the
18 way to Dallas as possibly maybe a border perimeter. It
19 doesn't delineate it as a line and it kind of takes in the
20 connotation of area. I guess you could use border area,
21 but I think border area is not strong enough. I think
22 border area still suggests a delineation of a line.
23 MR. VALE: Definition. It's a 100
24 kilometers from the international boundary. (Speaking
25 sotto voce inaudibly.)
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1 MR. LOVE: Yeah, but as we're communicating,
2 I don't think most people realize, right, that that's what
3 the definition is.
4 MR. VALE: (Speaking sotto voce.) 100
5 kilometers.
6 MR. SCHWEBEL: Mr. Secretary, Gerry Schwebel
7 again. You know, I'm glad to see Mr. Russell's here,
8 Alan's here for today's program. But Alan and I serve on
9 a ports committee as well and what this ports committee
10 and appointed by the Lieutenant Governor. What this
11 particular port committee is focusing on is what we call,
12 you know, infrastructure outside the gate, so our
13 particular would be outside of our port of entry so that
14 we tie in, you know, whatever we're planning for our ports
15 of entry that it also falls in line with adequate planning
16 for infrastructure for ingress and egress out of those
17 ports of entry. We don't want the congestion to be at the
18 bottom of that gridlock to be at the port of entry, we
19 want it to flow. That includes perhaps looking at kind of
20 like what Caroline works and I work for on the freight
21 mobility. We talk about maybe planning for widening some
22 of these like I-35 or what we talk about all these
23 Interstate highways that it all as a result of the growing
24 quality of activity of traffic through the ports of entry.
25 There -- it's never ahead.
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1 MR. CASCOS: Well, the infrastructure
2 enhancements do not end at the border and we've said that
3 numerous times, along with the Mexico side, but that's
4 still not our side. They have to go all the way through.
5 I mean it doesn't -- you're right, doesn't do any good to
6 enhance, you know, half a mile or a mile to get you out of
7 the Webb County or El Paso County. That infrastructure
8 goes all the way through the state and -- and it should.
9 Widening I-35, good luck. I mean it's -- it'd be widened
10 and another -- I-35, as you-all know if you remember, that
11 there's 25 choke points in the United States and nine of
12 them are in Texas and probably the busiest choke point is
13 I-35 between New Braunfels and just in George- --
14 Georgetown so it's a horrible thoroughfare and you'd be
15 surprised the truck traffic that goes through that 35, you
16 know, corridor. And I've suggested to TxDOT doing a
17 couple of things and, you know, one of them is to -- is
18 to -- you know, regarding tolls on I-30, you know,
19 building dedicated truck lanes, you know, adjacent to the
20 existing truck lanes -- I mean existing highways that we
21 have where the right-of-way's available and I think that
22 they're looking at that. But at the end of the day, it's
23 going to be all about funding.
24 MS. MAYS: And a quick comment on John's
25 comment about not looking just at the border as -- as, you
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1 know, one region or just a crossing. That's why I think,
2 you know, slides that Michael presented, we talked about
3 trade gateways and corridors because again that is much
4 broader looking at how trade flows. The border is a known
5 that, you know, trade flows through it, but the corridors
6 is what really makes that goes whatever it needs to go.
7 So, you know, again is after this committee, if you want
8 to embrace this whole concept of trade gateways and
9 corridors or trade gate -- gateways would include the
10 actual POEs and then the corridors is really what makes
11 that trade move. So again you might want to think about
12 that and have a consistent, you know, term or terms that
13 the committee uses moving forward.
14 MR. VILLA: Yes. So -- so moving forward.
15 Again, you have this paper in your -- on your booklet so
16 what I would like to show you is where we're going from
17 here and we have the core elements and then we have the
18 strategies and then what we would like to do on the next
19 meeting in Brownsville is come up with these strategies
20 which again I won't go in through detail to them, but what
21 we would like to do -- and again following the Secretary's
22 comment earlier is we have the goals and objectives that
23 we discussed earlier this morning, then we have the key
24 challenges. Please send us any comments that you have on
25 that list that I presented so we can add them to the list.
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1 Then we have the specific strategies. How to tackle these
2 challenges that we have and then go to specific actions
3 and specific responsibilities.
4 So again this is a plan, this is a plan
5 forward that we're try to make -- and again we would like
6 to go into this working session in the next time we meet.
7 And again if you can send us something in advance, that'll
8 be great because again we can start putting -- again
9 filling in this matrix and we can come up with specific
10 action items and responsibilities. And then we can also
11 need to have another column for performance measures, how
12 are we going to actually identify if we are really doing
13 our job on -- on meeting that -- that strategy and -- and
14 meeting that challenge.
15 So again this is just thought -- food for
16 thought so we can again in the next meeting and even
17 before that if you can send e-mails to Caroline, she will
18 forward to us and that's our main objective for, you know,
19 Michael, Jolanda and myself to get something done by
20 December 31st.
21 Comments or suggestions on the actual plan,
22 how do we move forward?
23 Need some coffee.
24 Thank you.
25 MR. CASCOS: You're the only one that got an
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1 applause. I guess because you're the last one for that
2 segment.
3 Caroline, we're going to move on to the
4 private sector?
5 Okay. We're going to move on. We're about
6 14 minutes behind schedule, let's make it up.
7 Private sector perspective, provide an
8 overview of the commercial vehicle perspective, the
9 maquiladora perspective and the customs broker
10 perspective.
11 Alan, are you ready? Are you first?
12 MS. MAYS: Yeah, he has to go and actually
13 take -- you know, have special seats for you out there.
14 MR. CASCOS: Alan, Martin Campos and Hector
15 Martinez. Oh, a panel discussion. Cool. And if you
16 could as panelists just introduce yourselves, who you're
17 with and we'll take it from there.
18 MS. PROZZI: Good morning. My name is
19 Jolanda Prozzi, I'm with the Texas A&M Transportation
20 Institute and I will be moderating the panel, the private
21 sector panel this afternoon. So we'll start with brief
22 introductions of a very distinguished panel with a lot of
23 experience working on the border and then we will give
24 each panel member five to ten, maybe fifteen minutes, to
25 talk about their company's role in the international trade
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1 and thereby providing us with a manufacturing, the broker
2 and the transportation perspective.
3 So I'll start off by introducing Mr. Alan
4 Russell, he's the president and CEO of the TECMA group of
5 companies that he cofounded in 1986. TECMA group of
6 companies provides shelter, manufacturing support and
7 consulting services throughout Mexico. Mr. Russell is
8 also the chairman of one of Mexico's major industrial
9 development committees, a member of the Energy Counsel of
10 the Americas, Southwest Maquila Association, El Paso
11 Chamber of Commerce, Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and I'm
12 sure many more committees for which we don't -- we
13 probably didn't allow time this afternoon.
14 So I'll start off and hand off the
15 microphone to you.
16 MR. RUSSELL: Thank you.
17 Good to see all of you again. I've met most
18 of you before. It's a pleasure to be here. I got up this
19 morning and put on a tie because the Secretary of State
20 was going to be here and I don't know what I was thinking.
21 I should have assumed that our great friend, Judge Cascos,
22 is the same guy that he was before and we appreciate your
23 jeans and boots when you come to visit us very much. So
24 I'll leave the tie off next time I make -- make the trek.
25 As for the introduction, I'm 30 years into
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1 this business, this -- this year, this is our thirtieth
2 anniversary. My hair was dark when I started in Mexico in
3 the manufacturing business and this is what it does to
4 you, okay, with the challenges. My job here is to talk a
5 little bit about just the manufacturing sector and say --
6 I'll stay out of the ports and out of the customs issues
7 as much as I can and stay off that soapbox as much as I
8 can.
9 Let me give you a little perspective of the
10 manufacturing sector. The stars have never been so
11 aligned for Mexico and the opportunity between Mexico and
12 the United States as they are today. Thirty years I've
13 been watching this. In the last six years, seven years,
14 TECMA has almost doubled in size as a result of the
15 current administration's move for increased taxes, health
16 care, transportations cost, the problems in China, the --
17 the increasing cost in getting goods from China into
18 the -- into the North American market has created a
19 synergy that is compounding in Mexico. And I do not think
20 that Mexico's manufacturing is going to put China out of
21 business or even offer a large competitive advantage
22 against China. China's profile, if you looked at a graph,
23 is this tall (indicating) and Mexico's manufacturing
24 profile is like this tall (indicating) in regards to that.
25 So -- but there is a tremendous support for
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1 North America in the relationship with Mexico. An
2 example, the auto sector is the fastest growing and the
3 largest sector in Mexico. It imports 70 percent of the
4 component parts that are put in the three million cars
5 that are being built this year in Mexico, mostly from the
6 United States, those component parts, 70 percent.
7 Every -- the 15 million cars that are built in the
8 United States, 40 percent of the component parts going
9 into those cars in the United States is coming from Mexico
10 in some transaction of that freight that you saw in the
11 graph. And as my colleague said, there's as much freight
12 coming southbound into Mexico as there is going
13 northbound, it's a pretty balanced element.
14 So the challenges we're facing is probably
15 labor. We have moved as TECMA from when I spoke to you
16 last some months ago, we've been from 4,000 employees to
17 7,000 employees all in the contract manufacturing
18 business. And that's organic growth from our existing
19 clients. The decision to stay in Mexico and expand in
20 Mexico is an easy decision compared to journey to China
21 which used to be the obvious solution. It's no longer
22 obvious. Company's still are going to look at China, but
23 they're going come back and take a look at Mexico, see the
24 competitive price, the location to the market and, you
25 know, make the toss and Mexico gets the toss.
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1 So we've -- we've got a lot of work to do to
2 handle this. The infrastructure in the Mexican side was
3 never developed or intended to handle this kind of -- of
4 traffic. One of our largest competitive problems is
5 available labor. So we can say, well, if Mexico's going
6 to continue to grow in the manufacturing sector at this
7 enormous rate, how can you say we have a shortage of
8 laborers? There's 100 million people in Mexico, a very
9 young work force. There's only less than half of them in
10 the manufacturing sector. Where are they? Well, I've
11 been through three major recessions with TECMA and I
12 followed this carefully.
13 In 2007 when the great recession began, our
14 industry right here in Juarez laid off 83 million -- well,
15 83,000 employees and these are mainly young people. They
16 were the junior people in each of these companies that we
17 laid off, we put them on the streets. At the same time,
18 there's security issues and so forth that we don't have to
19 get into right now, but I know many of you have children
20 that have gone off to college or got out of school,
21 they've gone out into the workforce, maybe they've lost
22 their job and what's the first thing they do is they move
23 back home. And they could live at home, take their old
24 bedroom, live very inexpensively, do odd jobs and exist
25 for a very inexpensive cost on a monthly basis.
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1 So when we laid them off, these 83,000
2 people, they migrated back to where -- and this was in
3 every border community had the same effect -- they
4 migrated back to their homes, whether it was in Durango or
5 Guanajuato or wherever it may have been, an
6 agricultural-based community and they -- they lived there
7 where they had support, where they could live. There was
8 no work here.
9 The press wanted you to believe that 83,000
10 people fled the city because of the violence. I take
11 great exception to that. They fled the city because there
12 wasn't any work and they now are migrating back. But the
13 manufacturing sector spiked much faster than the -- than
14 anyone could have predicted. Bear in mind that when a
15 Walmart shelf runs dry for the first time and that
16 warehouse cavitates for the first time, the orders pour in
17 to the manufacturing sector and the line of demand is
18 probably a 70 percent vertical line. The migration of the
19 employees coming back into the maquila workforce is a much
20 slower process. So it will ebb and flow and we will find
21 our manufacturing talent as this next year progresses.
22 So our greatest challenges is the work
23 force. Security issues not so much. The media still
24 locks on to it occasionally, but it's not a bottom-line
25 problem for us. The greatest opportunity is the world
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1 situation as we see it today focusing on the relationship
2 between Mexico and the United States. So we see nothing
3 but good fortune ahead. We're strongly in the acquisition
4 of new clients, building new factories and bringing and
5 recruiting more employees.
6 We currently have -- and this is never
7 before -- we have four Chinese companies sign contracts
8 with us in the last year. Now, these Chinese companies,
9 two of them were actually state owned, but they realize
10 that to compete in the North American market, they've got
11 to be located in Mexico. They can no longer ship from
12 China -- produce the product, ship from China into this
13 North American market to be competitive. So there is a
14 shift going on. We don't see so many U.S. companies
15 coming back from China, it's not like there's this big
16 migration, we haven't seen a lot of that, but instead of
17 expanding in China or having an additional factory in
18 China, they're making the Mexico decision. So -- but
19 they're -- you know, moving a factory is a huge economic
20 decision so they're not just shutting down from China and
21 moving back over here as we've read in the press. We --
22 we don't see it. We hear about it, but it's not on the
23 radar.
24 So with that I'll pass the mic and be ready
25 for any questions you might have. Thank you.
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1 MS. PROZZI: Thank you, Mr. Russell.
2 Our next panelist member is Mr. Martin
3 Campos, he's the executive director of CTE Mexico which is
4 a major transportation and logistics company. Mr. Campos
5 is also the international relations representative for
6 Canaco in Ciudad Juarez. Mr. Martin has hold numerous
7 positions in the maquiladora industry for past 30 years,
8 including production styles and inventories. But today
9 we're very interested in the transportation perspective.
10 Thank you.
11 MR. CAMPOS: Thank you. Thank you for the
12 invitation. I come from Juarez and when I speak to
13 groups, I tell them that we are the city of the golden --
14 golden eggs, we have a lot of opportunities in Mexico and
15 in El Paso. El Paso and Juarez lives from the industry
16 basically, maquiladora industry. I've been working for
17 the industry the last 30 years. And then I start my own
18 company in transportation and start learning more about
19 the business. As Russell says we have a big opportunity
20 in the industry and all of the equipments and merchandises
21 that are manufactured in Mexico are transported by
22 carriers, the Mexican carriers, as we are. I define as a
23 blood from the industry, we are the blood of the industry,
24 blood for your body. We want to transport your energy
25 which you use turning the blood so we are the carriers, we
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1 are the blood.
2 Here locally we have to face a lot of
3 challenges like the transport the goods southbound and
4 northbound on a secure and fast way and we as your
5 carriers faces a lot of problems on the bridges especially
6 as we describe it as a parking lot. Sometimes we spend
7 two, three hours waiting to cross thousands of dollars on
8 a trailer, be on time on [sic] the airport to take the
9 plane and the goods and transport it to different places.
10 A few minutes ago we saw a graph where you see one day to
11 seven days how the transportation industry distributed to
12 the United States. You have to look the same scenario,
13 but on the Mexico side. Somebody asked why is Laredo
14 is -- is taking the transportation and not El Paso.
15 Because on the Mexican side, it's faster to transport
16 goods from Guadalajara, Queretaro, San Luis,
17 Aguas Calientes to Laredo than to El Paso. We have 1,000
18 kilometers from Guadalajara to Laredo. You have to run
19 1,500 kilometers from Guadalajara to Juarez and make it
20 longer and it's -- I mean the traffic it's much slower.
21 And when you cross to Laredo, the corridor there is much
22 faster, but the companies are located all over the place
23 now in Mexico, not only in Juarez. And so we have to look
24 and see how we can work to make Juarez and El Paso a
25 better option for the business.
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1 What opportunities I see on the area willing
2 to -- to cross faster and safe. Most of the traffic that
3 comes from Juarez to El Paso are not certified companies.
4 Thirty percent probably of the goods are crossing through
5 the fast lanes, if I'm not mistake, it's less than 35
6 percent. All of the rest are not certified so that's why
7 we have slow lines. To a certain point when you make a
8 shipment northbound, we have -- we don't have a defined
9 fast line to cross from Mexico to the United States. Fast
10 line starts from the entrance of the bridge, cross and
11 exit the bridge from the United States. It's the same --
12 the same scenario going southbound, there is no fast lines
13 to cross from the United States to Mexico. So one of the
14 challenges that needs to face is designated lines to cross
15 the trucks faster and safer.
16 One of the other things that we see as a
17 carrier is the infrastructure on the -- on the bridges.
18 Many times we don't have -- or you -- you guys don't have
19 the staffing at the port of entries, got a lot of booths
20 but only half of the booths are open. Not only -- not
21 only on the Mexican side, also on the U.S. side. We need
22 to staff more people at the booths. Infrastructure to get
23 to the -- to the bridges, the people here from El Paso you
24 can notice that we as a carrier make long, long lines
25 through the border, through the 375, through the Paisano,
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1 through the I-10 sometimes and people don't like that.
2 And we also don't like it, but it's the only way we can go
3 to -- to Juarez or to El Paso so sometimes when we have
4 problems with the systems, which is the other issue, if
5 the system goes down or if the system has problems, then
6 the long lines are -- are created by the carriers and
7 we -- we move the goods from El Paso into Juarez, we are
8 the good guys when we are moving the goods faster, when we
9 stop the lines and we affect the tourist traffic, then we
10 now we are the bad guys because we don't let them cross to
11 their homes or to their jobs or to their schools. So
12 the -- the other thing that we need to face on making it
13 more efficient is the systems. Make the systems reliable
14 or that you can trust in it and cross faster and safe and
15 we have a lot of opportunities there.
16 As Russell said on the manpower, we also are
17 facing the problem with the drivers. We don't have enough
18 drivers. We got trucks. Sometimes ours park at those
19 yards. We need more drivers, qualified drivers that can
20 drive your goods northbound or southbound secure and fast.
21 So we need to battle for or create more jobs also in the
22 industry, but also in the drivers, but we don't have
23 drivers and we don't have a way to move your goods.
24 So that's from the point of view from a
25 carrier perspective challenges that needs probably to be
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1 added to the presentation -- to the previous presentation
2 that I didn't see those parts of, I would like to be
3 considered on that. And one of the points that I -- I can
4 recommend by the Mexican authorities to participate
5 some- -- somebody asked if Mexico has a plan like this and
6 somebody else answered no, and that's correct. I'm a
7 carrier, Mexican carrier, and I have not been invited to
8 one of our meetings in Mexico to discuss this type of
9 issues. Probably does exist. Probably I'm not invited to
10 those meetings, but I -- I'm not aware of any reunions to
11 discuss this type of issues.
12 So that's all I have to say.
13 Thank you.
14 MS. PROZZI: Thank you. Our final panelist
15 is Mr. Hector Martinez, he's currently the vice-president
16 custom brokerage Trans-expedite, Inc. Mr. Hector obtained
17 his customs brokerage license in 2001 and has worked in
18 different positions with major manufacturers for more than
19 25 years. He has managed the foreign trade zone for
20 Thompson Consumer Electronics, imports for Cardinal Health
21 and Zenith Electronics, he's also been part of the
22 broker's association in various capacities for more than
23 20 years including being the director and the treasurer
24 and he's going to provide us with a broker perspective.
25 MR. MARTINEZ: Good morning. Thank you for
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1 inviting me and welcome to El Paso.
2 Well, after we've heard all these things and
3 seen that wonderful map, it's pretty impressive because
4 the spider it's great how it goes north, but it also goes
5 south so we see all that through our ports, through our
6 airports. We get daily trucks from Dallas, we get daily
7 truck from LA so it's -- it's very dynamic what we see
8 here on the border. But again we need the cooperation
9 between the city, the county, the federal, the state which
10 I believe, you know, that's the main reason that this
11 committee exists.
12 We see a lot of our traffic gets held up at
13 the bridges. A lot of times we say it's Customs and a lot
14 times it's just the traffic. I think with partnerships
15 and working together with both the Mexican government and
16 Mexican entities that handle this, we can improve it.
17 Last year I had a big customer and they were
18 opening a distribution center which will be -- which is
19 their biggest distribution center in the world and they
20 had this big question for me which I couldn't answer. How
21 long does it take to cross the bridge? I just told him,
22 "What time?" If it's at between 8:00 and 10:00, you're in
23 and out in 30 minutes. If it's between 10:00 and 2:00,
24 you're looking at about an hour maybe. Between 3:00 and
25 8:00, you're looking about an hour, two, it all depends.
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1 So they wanted an average in order to make their plans
2 because they've got their FedEx shipments that got to
3 leave, they've got their over the road, they've got their
4 three- to five-day shipments so they needed to know how
5 long it would take. And I had meetings and meetings over
6 it that they couldn't understand the concept that it all
7 depends, I couldn't give them a time. And there's too
8 many variables which is traffic, another one is Customs
9 both U.S. or Mexico Customs or the time of day and I think
10 the best way we can improve that is also work with
11 partnerships with Customs. We've reached out as an
12 association as a trade, worked closely with them on the
13 trusted traveler programs on the fast lanes. The fast
14 lane's only going to work if it's on both sides because in
15 the beginning it was only on one side so you still had to
16 wait on the other side. So wherever you do a fast lane or
17 a trusted traveler, it has to be on both ends.
18 Going again to collaboration on the
19 southern -- on all the infrastructure that needs to be
20 done in Mexico. Just to get to the bridge, sometimes
21 there's designated routes that are easy, sometimes there's
22 not. It's also on the U.S. side. I mean we've all
23 been -- if you're here from El Paso, you've seen the
24 traffic, you've seen the spaghetti bowl all backed up
25 Friday afternoons or Monday afternoons. So what we need
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1 to do is just work closely with -- with all our partners
2 and there's a lot of trade. I get a lot of calls from
3 potential customers coming in. And one of the biggest
4 things again is waiting times, you know, "Why does it take
5 so long? How do I do my client -- how can I ship if I
6 don't know if it's going to take four or five hours to
7 cross? If I got just in time, is that going to work?"
8 So as we continue improving -- and the
9 dialogue, I think it'll only make things better just
10 for -- for as the labor gets better, as the traffic gets
11 better. But we need -- I mean I can't sense -- I mean
12 it's very, very important that we communicate both as a
13 city, as a county, as a state and to the federal
14 government.
15 Thank you.
16 MS. PROZZI: We have about 20 minutes for
17 questions to bring us back on schedule. This is the time
18 where we open the floor for questions.
19 Is there any questions?
20 There's no questions and -- and as you guys
21 are thinking, I have -- I have a couple of questions that
22 I -- I can pose while BTAC members are thinking.
23 So one of the comments this morning is that
24 we -- we have data to look at the trends and the past, but
25 what we really need is to know what's going to hit us n
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1 the future. And so my first question is: From your
2 perspective, what are major industry trends that could
3 have a significant impact on cross-border trade in the
4 future?
5 MR. RUSSELL: A lot of you in this room know
6 that I've spent a couple million dollars of our own money
7 to try to initiate a private sector initiative relating to
8 technology. Funding is -- is always a challenge for our
9 governments to get together and allocate and today funding
10 is a bigger challenge -- I mean you can't get funding to
11 build infrastructure. It's needed, it will come, but it
12 takes time. It takes years to get infrastructure in
13 place. And I strongly believe that we have available
14 technology that we can use that can speed up these
15 bottlenecks that we're talking about. We've proven how
16 technology can improve let -- let's say. Remember the
17 toll gates we used to have to stop and throw money into
18 the little basket and so now we don't have to stop, we can
19 just drive through at 60 miles an hour and we see what
20 that has done to congestion with that little input of
21 technology to track.
22 So I -- and I won't get too long on this
23 high horse, but if we -- if we take a look at the -- the
24 border crossings that are occurring every day at every
25 port, let's say that a student has been at UTEP here for
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1 two years and they're going for a four-year degree and
2 they live in Juarez and they have to -- they can't afford
3 the fast-lane permit or an ex- -- you know, an express
4 lane, that they -- they -- do they need to stay in line
5 and need to be inspected every day? How often do they
6 need to be inspected? With some technology, we could sort
7 that out.
8 10,000 people live in Juarez and work in
9 El Paso every day so they're on that bridge every day,
10 every morning and every night they're going back. And
11 do -- and, you know, they've had the same job for 20
12 years, they're a minimum wage worker, they can't
13 necessarily afford to pay the cost of the express lane or
14 the Century card that some of us get to use.
15 So the technology's available, I think we
16 can speed up the border with the existing infrastructure
17 while working on the infrastructure. I think it -- the
18 infrastructure's got to come, but short term we've got a
19 bunch of young people out there that have a handle on this
20 technology and can create it and implement it and move our
21 trucks faster, move our pedestrians faster and move our or
22 car faster over the infrastructure that we've got in place
23 and do it in a much shorter window of time.
24 MR. MARTINEZ: I think also if we look at
25 historical data that trade has increased -- has been
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1 increasing all this time. One of the things we see is, as
2 Alan mentioned, the increase in the -- in the
3 manufacturing. If you look at the index which is the
4 association of maquiladoras in Juarez, they've had -- they
5 have graphs and they have information, how much new
6 employees have been added in the last year so --
7 So the trend is going -- that it's going,
8 it's increasing.
9 A lot of the manufacturing that's been
10 changed from China that is changing lines from China to
11 Mexico is another indicator that that's going to increase.
12 So I think all that we see, the increase in employment,
13 the increase -- the transferring of manufacturing to
14 Juarez is only going to be an increase in traffic here in
15 El Paso and all over the border.
16 MS. PROZZI: Caroline.
17 MS. MAYS: Yeah, since we have the private
18 sector here, I just wanted to ask them. A lot of the
19 people at the table here are public sector. If there's
20 one recommendation that you make for this group to
21 consider, you know, from your view at least each of you
22 think about one. I think Alan already kind of mentioned
23 one. But, you know, can you formulate the technology
24 piece in terms of recommendation that this group can
25 consider. And then I also want, you know, the other two
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1 speakers to kind of think about, you know, what
2 recommendations you want this group to consider in light
3 of what you heard the discussion this morning.
4 MR. RUSSELL: I'm going to have to stay
5 focused on the technology issue. I -- I love the new
6 infrastructure initiatives. Like I say we got to have it.
7 It's just getting the money to do it and the coordination
8 with the Mexico side is the challenge. We do have -- as
9 my colleague was saying, we do have some fast lanes for
10 trucks, but you can't get to the fast lane on the Mexico
11 side. So real intense coordination needs to occur between
12 the U.S. and Mexico to get that done.
13 From a technology standpoint, it's way over
14 my head of what the possibilities are, but I guarantee you
15 that if we use some funding and small amount funding and
16 engage the company like Google, for instance, and put some
17 of their young brilliant minds on this technology
18 challenge, they would come up with some ideas and some
19 concepts that would blow us away that could make us more
20 secure, allow CBP to focus where the highest risk is and
21 not having to vet absolutely every -- now, there's --
22 there's bad guys going to get through any security system,
23 but the majority of the contraband and the bad guys are
24 going to be in a separate category. And if we could
25 isolate those where those are the ones that are slowed
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1 down and being inspected more heavily and use technology
2 to vet and clear a vast majority of the traffic, again I
3 think it's -- it's the one single thing that could make a
4 huge difference in the commerce.
5 MR. MARTINEZ: One thing I -- that I would
6 suggest is the collaboration with the Mexican states that
7 border Texas and with the federal government of Mexico.
8 The more collaboration we get there because we can avoid
9 those bottlenecks because maybe they're building a bigger
10 highway through a port that we're not even looking at and
11 that's probably already happening. Just a collaboration
12 with them to get the information, to get the data and work
13 together with both the states that border the state of
14 Texas.
15 MR. RUSSELL: Say one more thing. I just
16 want to point out that the U.S. has funding challenges.
17 Multiply it times ten on the Mexico side for funding
18 challenges to address any kind of infrastructure. So we
19 have to take what Mexico has and work with them to use
20 that infrastructure more efficiently and that's the only
21 chance we've got because a huge part of the Mexico economy
22 was based on the oil industry and you know what that is so
23 every agency is struggling for capital and funding to get
24 anything done.
25 As an example I was in Tijuana last week.
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1 There's a new pedestrian bridge that comes across from
2 Tijuana to the Otay Mesa-San Diego area and a beautiful
3 infrastructure on the U.S. side, but Mexico couldn't get
4 the funding and it has caused a lot of controversy.
5 Finally they got up a -- a connecting walkway and the
6 workmanship was so poor, there's issues about its safety
7 and those kinds of things. So it's just a challenge from
8 an infrastructure standpoint. We can build all the
9 bridges we want to and are going to stop at the middle of
10 the border and unless we have that cooperation on the
11 other side, it's meaningless. So we've -- we've got to
12 help our friends. And I don't have any answers to that.
13 It's just an observation.
14 MR. CASCOS: Well, I mentioned earlier
15 the -- oh, excuse me.
16 Go ahead, Gerry.
17 MR. SCHWEBEL: I -- thank you. Thank you,
18 Mr. Secretary. Gerry Schwebel.
19 I guess my question to the panel and this is
20 something I guess we got to put it on the table. How do
21 you plan the unpredictability that we have right now on
22 the political scene on what we're going to do with Mexico?
23 How can you, Alan, plan adequately when you don't know
24 what's going to happen in November and the dialogue that's
25 been out there is not necessarily very positive. And that
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1 goes, I guess, to the three panel members.
2 Do you -- are you-all planning for some of
3 that or are you thinking everything's going to continue
4 the way it is?
5 MR. RUSSELL: Well, I've got a factory
6 standing by to convert to brick and sand so we're going to
7 bid on a wall. And my Mexican friends and I are going to
8 help build it. Okay? I do not believe -- you know, NAFTA
9 is 20-plus years old now, it has proven the economic ties
10 between the U.S., Mexico and of course Canada. Canada I
11 think was the loser when you look at the full economic
12 impact of NAFTA. That's not just not what I think, I
13 think the data shows that. Mexico and the United States
14 has -- has received tremendous benefit from it. I think
15 the rhetoric that we see from the politicians will be
16 softened and once they take position, they'll go, "Well,
17 yeah, but we're business people and this makes good
18 business sense," and all of this ground pounding will be
19 faded into the background and everybody will forget about
20 it. So -- and a little bit of that is we tend to try to
21 focus on the things we have some control over, but our
22 Mexican friends have been severely offended by this
23 rhetoric and it's unfortunate. It's going to take time to
24 rebuild those relationships no matter what happens. But
25 we don't see that one person, one administration can
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1 change the freight train of NAFTA and make any impact on
2 it whatsoever. Commerce creates friends. We don't fight
3 with people we're doing business with. And I think once
4 the numbers are on the table that maybe some of them don't
5 understand that issue will go away.
6 MR. MARTINEZ: I think we see the investment
7 especially we see it in Juarez it continues and U.S.
8 companies are expanding there. The -- like I mentioned
9 earlier they're transferring lines or they're building new
10 plants so I think they're preparing for a better future,
11 but at the same time they are worried about it and they
12 are concerned. But business, like Alan said, the commerce
13 is going to keep -- keep going.
14 MR. CAMPOS: Commerce is all over us, I mean
15 it's the world. I don't believe any president will change
16 this. This is a global interchange of goods, it won't
17 get -- it will not happen.
18 MR. CASCOS: Let me say this. I think
19 they're all -- they're all good comments. I think that
20 the relationship that Texas and Mexico has had for
21 generations is not going to be seriously impacted by -- by
22 whomever wins the presidency. I think the relationship
23 that -- that Texas will continue to have with Mexico will
24 stay positive regardless of who's there. And I will tell
25 you that -- that what we've done and I think Commissioner
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1 Drusina mentioned this at a meeting that we had that this
2 is probably in the last, oh, I don't know, maybe couple of
3 years or so, this has been probably one of the better
4 relationships that Texas has had with Mexico in a long
5 long time. And we're going to continue to do so. And I
6 think that we do it by engaging. I think we do it by --
7 and I agree. I think that, you know, Mayor, I think that
8 this Good Neighbor committee that -- that you're heading
9 up, I think it'd be wise as you plan your next meeting,
10 the location, to let every BTAC member know if they'd like
11 par- -- I mean if they'd like to go and listen in as to
12 what -- you know, what is transpiring. You know, I -- you
13 know, I'm -- I went to the -- to the inaugural of -- of
14 El Branco last year in Nuevo Leon and I was the only one
15 from Te- -- I was the only one from the United States
16 there. The only one obviously from Texas there and it
17 developed a good relationship with him. He went to Austin
18 subsequent to that, had a good dialogue with
19 Governor Abbott who, as you-all know, has been very very
20 supportive of the border and the -- and the Rio Grande
21 Valley and that's going continue.
22 I'm planning on going to the inaugural of
23 the new Tamaulipas governor who I know and it's about
24 building relationships. And, yeah, there -- there may be
25 some skittishness around, but -- but I think at the end,
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1 you know, we continue that dialogue, we continue those
2 relationships, we continue talking with them. On the
3 mayor's side -- and that's where it starts, I think that
4 the -- the conversations regarding infrastructure starts
5 at the local level, starts talking to your counterparts
6 in, you know, in Nuevo Laredo and in Matamoros for, you
7 know, for Brownsville and in Juarez for El Paso and then
8 whatever community we have, it starts there and from there
9 it works its way up to the governor and then on -- on to
10 the federal level.
11 You know, there is a lot of rhetoric. I
12 don't believe that even if you get the contract and build
13 a wall, I don't think that that's going to deter trade,
14 deter trade. It may have a -- a, you know, maybe a
15 negative, you know, personal impact, but again none of our
16 trade has to go underground or -- at least not the legal
17 trade -- has to go underground or -- or jump any wall.
18 It's still going to continue going through our ports of
19 entry, we're still going to have congestion, we're still
20 going to have the same -- the same challenges that we have
21 today so I'm not really worried a whole lot. I think -- I
22 think we -- we have to maintain those open lines of
23 communication, you know, with our Mexican counterparts. I
24 think everybody in this room realizes the importance of
25 trade with Mexico. Half a million jobs is nothing to
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1 sneeze at. Half a million jobs created this state because
2 trade with Mexico is a big deal. And six million
3 throughout the country because of direct trade with Mexico
4 is a big deal and I don't think anyone is really going to
5 do a whole lot to -- to negatively impact that.
6 So I'm very confident that -- that the
7 trade's going to continue. I think if anything it's going
8 to get better. We have hiccups but like anything else,
9 you know, I think we're going to continue doing that
10 regardless, you're right, what -- an administration of one
11 person is -- is going to do. I think we just move on. I
12 think we do, we continue doing and expanding trade and
13 having this type of dialogue. And everyone in this room
14 is an ambassador for this state. Everyone in this room is
15 an ambassador. And any opportunity you have to speak in
16 favor, I know that you do, but speaking to your Mexican
17 friends and Mexican -- they're going -- they're going to
18 ask asking you. They're asking those questions, "What's
19 going to happen?" Just say, "We're going to continue
20 doing out thing. You know, that's not going to -- that's
21 not going to bother anybody."
22 So anything else on this topic?
23 MR. RUSSELL: I just want to make one
24 comment for you to consider, Mr. Secretary. I don't know
25 the exact number, but I think it's somewhere in excess of
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1 15 years since the governor of Texas and the governor of
2 the state of Chihuahua have ever met and I think that from
3 a building relation standpoint, there was some history
4 back there why they -- they stopped meeting and stopped
5 talking. It's long enough, it's passed.
6 MR. CASCOS: Well, I tell you, Alan, you
7 know the governor's first out-of-country visit was to
8 Mexico Labor Day a year ago and really nobody from Texas
9 had been to -- well, the governor from Texas has not been
10 to Mexico to speak with -- with their leadership since
11 2007. But I will convey that back and, again, you know,
12 I'm -- I'm heading to Tam- -- to Sur (phonetic) Victoria
13 October 1st, and we have to do that and that's -- that's
14 the beginning. And I think part of the -- part of the
15 rationale for Governor Abbott asking me to join his team
16 was to enhance and nurture the relationship that was
17 somewhat fragile between -- between Mexico and Texas
18 and -- and, you know, we're healing -- you know, we're
19 healing that. And I think the relationship that we have
20 today with Mexico is much better than it was a couple of
21 years ago so we just keep moving forward.
22 But thank you.
23 MR. RUSSELL: We new administration coming
24 in Mexico. The -- it's interesting, the people of Mexico
25 are showing signs of frustration with government as the
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1 people in the United States, thus why all of this -- this
2 campaigning rhetoric. The state of Chihuahua has switched
3 from PRI to PAN this election, there's a brand new
4 governor stepping in is -- is very much a surprise to
5 everyone. For the first time ever in history, the city of
6 Juarez has elected a -- an independent mayor having
7 nothing to do with either party. Both the governor and
8 the mayor have been living their platforms since they were
9 university students about corruption in Mexico and how to
10 address it and fix it. And so they have a platform now
11 and it'd just be wonderful for us to seize the opportunity
12 to bind the largest state in the country of Mexico and the
13 largest state in Texas [sic] together.
14 MR. CASCOS: I may be reaching out to you if
15 you can help us out. Thank you.
16 Mayor?
17 MR. LEESER: One thing that to your point,
18 Alan. When -- when I got elected, it was important that
19 we created that relationship with Mexico so the mayor of
20 Juarez and I traveled across the United States together as
21 one voice and talked to the companies that actually have a
22 business in Juarez and have a business in El Paso and
23 I'll -- our visit was to, "How do we help you have a
24 better return on investment? How do we help you grow your
25 business and what are your concerns?" And the mayor of
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1 Juarez was very proactive and so were we to make sure that
2 we address those concerns. We weren't out there to ask
3 for expansion or anything like that. How do we grow
4 together? Then we got to meet with the governor and kind
5 of give him some of the vision, some of the things. And
6 then I had the opportunity to meet the President of Mexico
7 and talk about our community and how the El Paso
8 community, the Juarez community has become one economy and
9 how we're working together for the same common goal and
10 that's our citizens. And so that's been very important
11 and the new governor -- I mean mayor elect, I had the
12 opportunity to meet and he wants to continue to visit us,
13 wants to continue to travel the U.S. together with one
14 voice and within the next few weeks, I had the opportunity
15 to meet the new governor elect to kind of talk about our
16 vision so we're working with it.
17 MR. CASCOS: Good deal.
18 Anything else?
19 MS. PROZZI: Okay. I have one more question
20 and this is going to help us access anything with this
21 document. And so, you know, we talk a lot about the
22 efficient trade and efficient cross-border trade and I was
23 wondering if you have a number in mind in terms of
24 cross-border crossing time, what would that be? Fifteen
25 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour?
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1 MR. RUSSELL: With -- with our -- we'll move
2 10,000 trucks this year northbound across this border
3 sector this year and we tell our clients that we have to
4 have the door closed on the truck by 1:00 p.m. the day of
5 the shipment if they want to make FedEx and freight
6 connections in El Paso. If they leave by 1:00 -- if the
7 door is shut by 1:00 p.m., pretty consistently we can make
8 those cutoffs. If it's 2:00 p.m., it starts getting
9 questionable. If it's 3:00 p.m., 50/50 that they're going
10 to make it. So that's our answer to that question. 1:00
11 p.m. is the cutoff and you better have the door closed on
12 that truck headed to the border or you're not going to
13 make FedEx, UPS, and all of the other carrier's that are
14 packing up and ready to move.
15 MR. MARTINEZ: I agree with that one. We --
16 we're kind of a little bit more aggressive there to 2:00
17 p.m., but -- but if it gets to 2:30, we're not going to
18 make it. We're not going to make it. Now the truck or
19 the product has to sit in El Paso in another warehouse,
20 wait till the next day, till the next flight so the
21 quicker the better. I don't think we -- we would like
22 just to be faster than what it is today, a lot faster.
23 MR. CASCOS: You know, we've got about a
24 minute so we can get back on schedule.
25 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I'm sorry.
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1 MR. CAMPOS: 1.5 hours so the truck can make
2 three -- three trips -- round trips in a regular time,
3 ten-hour so three hours a round trip.
4 MS. PROZZI: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. And
5 thank you, members of the industry, for participating in
6 this panel.
7 MR. CASCOS: All right. So we're -- so
8 we're at halftime. 15 minute break.
9 (A break taken.)
10 MR. CASCOS: All right. It's now 11:45 and
11 we're about to start our next segment the regional
12 planning and this is providing an overview of planning
13 efforts in the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez border metroplex
14 region and with we have -- well, who's going to monitor?
15 Okay. You're on it.
16 MS. PROZZI: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. So
17 the interest of time, I'm not going to read through the
18 bios, but it is available here in the agenda for you to --
19 to read at your leisure. I'm just going to introduce the
20 speakers one by one and then hand over the mic --
21 microphone.
22 So our first speaker is Mr. Bob Bieleck,
23 he's the El Paso district engineer at Texas Department of
24 Transportation.
25 MR. BIELECK: Okay. Thank you.
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1 While we're getting the power point up, I
2 wanted to make a couple of comments about the El Paso
3 district. There are some things that are a little bit
4 different about the El Paso district from most other
5 districts. Aside from the fact we're the largest district
6 in TxDOT at 22,000 square miles, typically what I like to
7 say to people, my home state is Pennsylvania. If you draw
8 an east-west line halfway between the north and south
9 border, either side of that is the El Paso district. But
10 we also have borders. Nearly 400 miles of border with
11 Mexico. But what makes us unique, we also have about
12 180 miles of border with New Mexico. And sometimes the
13 communication between Mexico City and Juarez is better
14 than between Santa Fe and Las Cruces. And we have some
15 issues on that side as well.
16 One thing that's -- that I'd like to point
17 out in terms of infrastructure, which is what our focus
18 is, it's not only the freight trips. Yes, there are 2,000
19 truck trips northbound by the day through the bridges here
20 in El Paso, but we also have 33,000 POV trips and about
21 16,000 pedestrians coming across through those border
22 checkpoints every single day of the year. That puts a lot
23 of demand on the infrastructure on both sides of the
24 border, not only here in El Paso but in Juarez as well.
25 See if this is working.
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1 If somebody can just move that ahead a
2 couple of slides.
3 Part of what we're dealing with is not only
4 border trade, but the other interesting thing about the
5 district is the Permian Basin and the Delaware Basin run
6 together right where 62/180 and 652 run into New Mexico.
7 So we not only have a lot of challenges --
8 Go ahead and go past that.
9 -- we have to do an awful lot of
10 coordination. A lot of my staff has been to Mexico City.
11 I've been to Ojinaga already this year and last year. In
12 fact there are probably some people wondering how a TxDOT
13 truck got across the border. I know the agent on the way
14 back asked me whether or I was able to able to take that
15 truck into Mexico.
16 So we work regularly with the city, with the
17 county, with the folks across the border. Work with the
18 state department. People from Presidio will be very happy
19 to know that yesterday morning we overnighted the
20 Presidential permit application to the state department so
21 they should have had it now for a couple hours so you can
22 start calling them and asking them why it hasn't been
23 approved yet.
24 Sam mentioned earlier that you need to look
25 ahead four years. Not nearly enough. A major
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1 transportation facility will take us anywhere from ten to
2 fifteen years to implement so we need to start planning
3 quite a bit before four years in order to provide
4 facilities that will support the kinds of things that you
5 want to do.
6 Now, we've got some things going on here in
7 El Paso that we've been working on. One of the big ones
8 is this I-10 connect project. Now there's a couple of
9 reasons for that. Once when we complete the Loop around
10 El Paso, we'll need to be able to get people between the
11 Border Highway, between the Loop and I-10 essentially at
12 the end of this segment where we don't have any frontage
13 roads. The only urban section of Interstate in the state
14 of Texas that doesn't have frontage roads is here in
15 El Paso between Mesa Street and Copia. And we're -- we're
16 closing half of that with the Go 10 project. But we'll
17 still have about five miles with no frontage roads. This
18 will get people between the two. And why is that?
19 I-10 was built in the '60s. The average
20 expected life of concrete pavement is 50 years. That's 55
21 years old. It was designed in the late '50s when the
22 heaviest trucks were 72,000 pounds and the projected
23 traffic 50 years out on I-10 was 100,000 vehicles a day,
24 average daily traffic, and four percent of those vehicles
25 will be trucks. Well, we've got 80,000-pound trucks, I
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1 have well over 200,000 average daily traffic in segments
2 of I-10. And by the way those trucks are closer to 12 to
3 15 percent. So I-10 is going to come apart, we need to
4 get there. But when you start doing this, this is going
5 to affect access to the Bridge of the Americas. So what
6 we're trying to do is to design this to do a couple of
7 things. One is to get the trucks out of the
8 neighborhoods. We've been getting a lot of complaints
9 about trucks idling in the neighborhoods so we've made
10 some modifications to the project to take care of that.
11 But we also want to give flexibility to CBP as those
12 trucks move to the inspection facility that will have
13 extra lanes, that will be able to use some lanes for
14 trucks, some lanes for POVs and will able to expand and
15 contract which of those we've used at any one time. This
16 project we hope to start building in 2018, toward the end
17 of 2018, $75 million project that we're moving ahead on.
18 I mentioned before closing the Loop. Part
19 of that is this Border West Expressway. Border West
20 Expressway runs from the existing Loop 375 about a mile
21 east of Park Street to Racetrack on the west side where it
22 connects into Paisano and into I-10. This will close the
23 gap in the Loop as long as we can consider that about
24 eight miles of I-10 as part of that Loop. $600 million
25 project moving right along, should be completed by the end
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1 of 2018. I'm working very closely with IBWC since a lot
2 of this roadway is built down on the levee. Working very
3 closely with both UPRR and BNSF because what isn't built
4 on the levee is being built over top of the railroads.
5 And to give you an idea, the three tracks out there for
6 UPRR and Union Pacific Railroad, one goes to Chicago and
7 one goes to Virginia, one goes to Florida. Well, that's
8 sort of like putting I-10, I-20 and I-40 within 14 feet of
9 each other so you can imagine that trying to build over
10 top of those and around those is quite a challenge. A lot
11 of the work going on on Border West hopefully will be
12 finished by the end of 2018.
13 Go 10 project. This is taking care of part
14 of that lack of frontage roads that we've talked about.
15 This is building collector distributor roadways from Mesa
16 to Executive Center on I-10 to give us the ability when we
17 have an incident or doing maintenance that we can get
18 traffic off of I-10 and move it around that operation.
19 About $158 million project took about 12 or 13 years to
20 get to bring to fruition through all of the planning in
21 the environmental processes and we're out there building
22 that today. As I said $158 million project scheduled to
23 be completed first quarter or second quarter of 2019.
24 This project, because of some changes that we've made in
25 the Sunland Park area, probably will finish a little bit
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1 before that.
2 I-10 widening. I-10, most of that traffic
3 whether it's commercial -- particularly commercial but
4 commercial or personal ends up on I-10. And if it isn't
5 head up at the border in a queue, it's held up when it
6 gets to I-10. So we're adding another lane on I-10
7 between Zaragoza and Eastlake. This project was just --
8 as soon as we finish the last two connectors on the
9 interchange, we will start building this.
10 Now one of the problems that we have are the
11 connections between the ports and the -- and I-10, which
12 is the main distributor road. A place where we're short
13 because of funding that was available at that time, Loop
14 375 from I-10 to the Zaragoza does not have complete
15 frontage roads. Nobody wanted to build over the railroads
16 and the canal at that time with bridges. Also there are
17 only two lanes there instead of three lanes which is what
18 we have on most of the rest of Loop 375. So we've got a
19 project in the works to expand from two lanes to three
20 lanes from the Zaragoza Port of Entry out to Bob Hope and
21 we will complete the frontage roads with bridges on --
22 over the railroads and the canal on both sides.
23 Presidio. This is building a twin structure
24 so that we'll have two lanes southbound and two lanes
25 northbound and we won't have to shut the bridges down to
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1 southbound traffic every morning when we haul three or
2 four mobile homes across that bridge.
3 As I said the application for the
4 Presidential permit was transmitted to the department of
5 state overnighted yesterday so they should have it this
6 morning. We're trying to get that permit approved prior
7 to January 20th. The reason for that is simple. All of
8 the people that have to sign off are probably going to
9 change irrespective of who wins and so we don't want to
10 have a lot of people looking at it again for the first
11 time, instead of the folks who have been working on it all
12 along. It's about a $10 million project working with
13 Mexico to see who builds what or at least who pays for
14 what. But we have to go and take a look at the
15 international boundaries about three quarters of the way
16 across the river at this point. So this is a project
17 hopefully we will be able to start building this next
18 summer, maybe late summer.
19 Americas interchange. Again trying to get a
20 completely directional interchange to connect Loop 375
21 with I-10 to facilitate traffic. Now, a lot of what's
22 been happening hasn't been able to move freight or people
23 eastbound very easily because the last two direct connects
24 are southbound 375 to eastbound I-10 and northbound 375 to
25 eastbound I-10. Now, the first one's more important to me
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1 because that's how I -- I'll get to work. Our office is
2 right on -- on the corner here. But this project is
3 moving very quickly, should be finished before Halloween
4 and that will allow the widening of I-10 to move forward.
5 Alameda is some additional circulation. But
6 probably more important are the corridor studies going on
7 here in El Paso. This is the planning where we're trying
8 to get ahead, trying to get an idea of what's coming up so
9 we can start not four years ahead about time but ten years
10 ahead of time to get facilities in place.
11 This is Border Highway East. This is taking
12 a look at what happens east of 375 today, east of the
13 Zaragoza Port of Entry. Where are we going to connect?
14 How are we going to do that?
15 The PEL study was recently completed and
16 we'll be moving forward with more detail planning on this
17 study.
18 Probably the most important one is the I-10
19 corridor study. As I said I-10 has reached its useful
20 life. It is the valve on commerce in and out of Texas to
21 the west coast. And that valve is right downtown
22 underneath a series of bridges where we have three lanes
23 in each direction that if you go down there today, you'll
24 see a Bellagio fountain coming up when -- every time an
25 18-wheeler goes through on the joints because everything
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1 underneath is still water since we've had some rain
2 recently. So we're going to be taking a very hard look at
3 what we can do along that corridor to improve the capacity
4 so that we can move traffic back and forth very easily.
5 Mesa. This is the only real alternative
6 today to I-10 and that is an arterial. It's an arterial
7 that goes up -- up the side of a mountain and back down
8 again. And we're going to be taking a look at that. What
9 can we do along Mesa and in particular what happens when
10 we get the Loop finished, when we get all of these
11 connections that I mentioned earlier finished, what
12 happens then with Mesa? We have a terrible problem on
13 Mesa with pedestrians getting hit crossing the street. We
14 have a lot of crossings up here near the university so
15 we're going to be taking a hard look at Mesa and what we
16 can do there.
17 Doniphan. This connects the state line of
18 Mexico. Eventually will connect directly to Paisano into
19 the Border West Expressway. If you've been out there last
20 night or this morning, you didn't get here because it's
21 flooded and there's mud all over the roadway. It's one of
22 the alternatives that trucks can take when they're trying
23 to get out to -- to the new UPRR yard in Santa Teresa
24 because there aren't many ways out there. I-10 today is
25 the only real way to get there, I-10 to Artcraft. Once we
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1 get this connection opened up, there will another alt- --
2 way out there, that will Paisano to Doniphan.
3 Upcoming corridor studies again on Alameda.
4 We'll be looking at U.S. 67, that's essentially from
5 Presidio to Marfa and then on to the Odessa. We were
6 talking about that earlier, taking a look at some of the
7 issues out there. We ran into a lot of people issues.
8 It's easy to say that we should be able to move trucks up
9 and down this roadway, but there's a low bridge in -- in
10 Alpine on U.S. 90 that's part of this. Well, guess what,
11 the people in Alpine don't want those trucks coming
12 through Alpine so they don't want the bridge fixed. So
13 those are some of the issues that we need to deal with as
14 we go through.
15 We're working hard with the New Mexico
16 Department of Transportation. Again that Union Pacific
17 yard out in -- out in Santa Teresa. It used to be that
18 everything coming across the bridge that was going on a
19 railroad would go to the Dallas yard downtown in El Paso.
20 Well, today what's happening all those trucks are getting
21 on I-10, going through that depressed section of downtown,
22 going up the have hill in front of UTEP at the Artcraft
23 [sic] because that's the only way to get out to that yard.
24 And likewise when they're coming back, they're coming back
25 the same way.
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1 So we're working very hard with them to take
2 a look at things like they're improving New Mexico 404
3 which goes through the Anthony Gap a fairly -- fairly flat
4 connection, but we have to build a roadway to connect to
5 what's called the Northeast Parkway so we're working hard
6 on that. So we're working very closely with New Mexico on
7 those issues.
8 So with that I'm going to turn it over and
9 I've already run long so I'm sure Matt won't mind giving
10 up some time.
11 MS. PROZZI: Mr. Secretary, in the interest
12 of time, I would ask that we leave the questions for the
13 end if that -- that works with you. And then I'm just
14 going to ask the panelists to introduce themselves.
15 MR. McELROY: Hi, I'm Matthew McElroy with
16 the city of El Paso.
17 If you could bring up the presentation and
18 I'll try to make up some of the -- some of the time here.
19 It's blue and white, it's got a City of El Paso front
20 slide on it.
21 MS. PROZZI: So I'm just going to jump in
22 and while they're bringing up the presentation, I'll do a
23 proper job of introducing Matthew McElroy. He's the
24 director of International Bridges at the city of El Paso
25 and he will be followed by Mr. Michael Medina who's of
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1 course executive director of the El Paso MPO. And then
2 finally we have Mr. Nicolas Lopez which is the director of
3 urban mobility with the Municipal Institute of Planning
4 and Investigation of Ciudad Juarez so that will provide us
5 with the -- with the state and perspective. And if we
6 need more time, I can also read the resumes.
7 MS. MAYS: Can we go to the next speaker?
8 MS. PROZZI: Okay. Caroline, Mr. McElroy
9 has to leave at 12:30.
10 MS. MAYS: As soon as we get it, we'll get
11 it up.
12 MS. PROZZI: Okay.
13 MR. MEDINA: So I guess I also don't have a
14 presentation.
15 Well, my name is Michael Medina, I'm the
16 executive director of the MPO, for those who have never
17 met me before. This is my day job so usually I'm quite
18 comical when I'm meeting people for the new -- for the
19 first time, but the interest of time and give Matthew an
20 opportunity, I'll skip my comical perspective.
21 So today what I'm going to do is I'm going
22 to go over -- relatively holistically over the planning
23 area of prior- -- priorities and applying it to these
24 within the MPO.
25 Go to the next slide.
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1 Okay. So in our planning area, it is a
2 bistate MPO so we have portions of El Paso County along
3 with Dona Ana and Otero County which are in New Mexico.
4 We have transportation policy board that is made up of 30
5 elected and appointed officials within the region in Texas
6 and New Mexico and so you also see the vision statement
7 and the mission statement and the objectives that we have.
8 So this is relatively new, believe it or not
9 we really didn't have a direction of what the MPO wanted
10 to do so now that we have introduced educational
11 requirements from our board members, we're moving in the
12 right direction to ensure that these elected officials and
13 appointed officials understand what the expectation is
14 from the federal and the state partners.
15 Next slide.
16 So let me talk about the region for -- for a
17 little bit. So obviously you heard me talk about that our
18 policy board is made up of New Mexico and Texas elected
19 and appointed officials. But what's important is that we
20 only get funding for about 800,000 which is on the Texas
21 side and a little bit less on the New Mexico side. But
22 the reality is that it is a region of 2.5 million people
23 so I'm sure that when Matthew starts his presentation,
24 you'll understand why having borders in this area really
25 affects our funding and the capabilities so we need to
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1 make sure that we work with everybody, that we build
2 consensus and on that note is that we work with a meet --
3 quite regularly we actually meet every week to understand
4 what the expectation is from our Mexican partners.
5 Next slide.
6 So some of the planning priorities that we
7 have of course is to progress our international ports of
8 entry. We have six international ports of entry in our
9 region. Along with that we understand that once we have
10 trade and commerce coming through our international ports
11 of entry, they land on the Interstate. So certainly as
12 you heard Mr. Bieleck talk about the mobility of it, the
13 accessibility and more important the reliability of our
14 freight system, we need to make sure that the Interstate
15 is good to go.
16 Next slide, please.
17 One of the other priorities that you heard
18 Mr. Bieleck talk about is the Northeast Parkway which is
19 illustrated in red. So there what we're trying to do that
20 in the event that there is incident on I-10, we can
21 utilize this as an incident management route along with
22 that encouraging freight to move within this facility so
23 this would easily facilitate the movement of any type of
24 accessibility through New Mexico into Texas and bypass, if
25 you will, the CBB -- CBD.
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1 The other area -- I'm sorry -- the other
2 area that we're also concentrating is on Fort Bliss. So
3 several years ago we actually benefited from the
4 realignment of the DOD's priorities so what we're trying
5 to do now with the aid of TxDOT is invest in these
6 corridor plans. One of things that we're also doing at
7 the MPO is that we're getting away from spot planning, if
8 you will. The idea is that we'll utilize these corridor
9 plans to identify the priorities and dedicate the funding
10 to those projects within the studies.
11 Another thing that we're looking at is
12 providing bus rapid transit, BRT, in our area so the lead
13 here is Sun Metro through the city of El Paso. So again
14 moving people, having accessibility is one of the key
15 points with transit. So we're trying to make it more
16 reliable. And if we want to understand that anybody that
17 is coming through our international ports of entry have
18 this access to also move within the system.
19 The first corridor that is actually active
20 right now is the Mesa Brio corridor so ideally here is
21 that it is made up of little under nine miles and it
22 provides mobility and accessibility for those within the
23 area that provide access to the university, medical
24 facilities and things of that nature.
25 Next slide.
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1 So the next three are up and comings BRT
2 corridors. We have the Alameda, which is about 15 miles,
3 and this will channel within the historical area of
4 El Paso. It'll start in downtown and it'll go out into
5 the Ysleta area. And so this will be quite interesting
6 because we are also waiting for a study from TxDOT to be
7 completed so that we can appropriately assign funding to
8 accelerate this project.
9 Next slide.
10 The next one is the Dyer corridor so it's
11 roughly about 12 miles as well and so ideally here is that
12 what we're trying to do is partner also with Sun Metro.
13 Sun Metro is also developing a --
14 (Sotto voce discussion off the record.)
15 MR. MEDINA: So I had to ask Matthew. So
16 Sun Metro is also developing a transit-oriented
17 development. I get lost with all these acronyms as well.
18 So ideally here again is that we want to make sure that
19 there's accessibility, mobility from the northeast of
20 El Paso to downtown in the event we want people to come
21 from Mexico, there's a way for them to access it without
22 relying on the roadway system.
23 Next slide.
24 The next one is also the Montana corridor.
25 We're looking just under 17 miles and here's another
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1 extension of our existing infrastructure that is also --
2 also on TxDOT roadway. And so we're also partnering with
3 TxDOT to ensure that the projects that are coming from the
4 MPO that we receive the appropriate funding so that we
5 accelerate at a corridor level.
6 Some of the other planning activities that
7 we have here. We are also tasked with looking at active
8 transportation, what essentially is pedestrian and bicycle
9 planning. In El Paso we have the Sun Cycle Bicycle Share
10 Program. We have several stations throughout the city and
11 we're also trying to expand that. One of the recent
12 things that the policy board has done is that it has
13 passed a resolution supporting an active transportation
14 system and essentially what this does is that we're trying
15 to connect Ciudad Juarez, El Paso and Las Cruces via
16 bicycle and pedestrian planning so they have seven
17 segments. At each of those seven segments are designated
18 to be aligned with a historical or a cultural resource and
19 so the -- the resolution is going to afford the
20 opportunity for anybody to come into the MPO and ask for
21 federal funding in conjunction with our historical funding
22 sources along with any private sources.
23 Next one.
24 So this is what I really wanted to talk to
25 you about which is the planning and environmental
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1 linkages. You heard Mr. Bieleck talk about the Pell
2 study. So the idea here what is very important for
3 you-all that represent different communities is to
4 understand that the environmental process when you have
5 federal and state aid is very complex. One of the things
6 that we have done here is that the district went ahead and
7 did the study -- about 100 square miles or so, a study,
8 and what it really does is it gives the MPO the
9 opportunity to identify projects and fund those projects.
10 So the one that I want to talk about is the Border Highway
11 East Project.
12 This project what we're going to do is that
13 we're going to apply tools that have been afforded to us
14 by the state legislators along with the policy of the MPO.
15 So ideally is that we would adopt a -- or we would have
16 potentially the regional mobility authority, the EPES
17 project, because we have various stakeholders involved.
18 From there is that each of the stakeholders municipal, the
19 stakeholders would pass transportation reinvestment zones
20 so for those who don't know what these TRZs are is that
21 it's a way for us to a fund transportation projects using
22 a buffer system. The money is set aside and dedicated
23 within this buffer system.
24 The real interest and what I really want you
25 to take away from this presentation is the policy that the
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1 MPO has with regard to preliminary engineering. We
2 have -- every fiscal year we set aside $2.4 million for
3 our smaller municipal partners to access for MPO projects.
4 So these $2.4 million that are -- for every fiscal year,
5 provide them the opportunity to start the engineering work
6 and the design for a construction project. So it's really
7 important that here at the MPO, we separate preliminary
8 engineering and construction, it provides us a better way
9 to fully fund projects and deliver them faster.
10 So if anybody has any questions or comments
11 I'll turn it over to Matthew.
12 MR. CASCOS: Anybody have any questions?
13 MR. McELROY: Are we ready?
14 MR. CASCOS: A parrot and a sailor walked
15 into a bar one day --
16 I'm just kidding.
17 MS. PROZZI: Maybe at this time we can ask
18 if there was any questions for Bob, with Bob's
19 presentation.
20 MR. GONZALEZ: I have a question.
21 Gabriel Gonzalez.
22 How do you fund your preliminary engineering
23 projects through the MPO? What kind of funds do you use
24 for that?
25 MR. MEDINA: So -- so we use surface
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1 transportation program funding. It's a category 7 at the
2 state level. Yes, sir.
3 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: And certainly if
4 anybody's interested in the policy, I can read it, I have
5 it by memory. But ideally is that it is a very useful
6 tool for us to accelerate projects.
7 MR. McELROY: I think we're ready.
8 Matthew McElroy, I'm the director for
9 international bridges for the city of El Paso. Before I
10 jump into the presentation and in hearing some of the
11 comments earlier today, I think that one of the most
12 valuable things that this committee might consider doing
13 is making a visit to San Diego to see the planning that
14 they've done Otay East. In terms of the -- the capacity
15 that SANDAG has for planning the number of years they are
16 ahead of us, it really is phenomenal to see how much work
17 that -- how much work they've done and how many decades
18 ahead they are ahead of us in terms of everything from
19 planning their revenue studies for congestion pricing for
20 the new ports, to land acquisition, you name it. It is --
21 between the work that Christina Casgar, who's the one who
22 runs that project with Marty Cox who -- and Marty Cox are
23 doing this really really impressive.
24 So into our regional planning work. A lot
25 of what we do is based on our interactions with MPO, a lot
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1 of our interactions with the maquiladora associations,
2 maquiladoras in general because there's a lot of data out
3 there and if you don't understand what happens at your
4 ports in terms of volumes, in terms of crossing times,
5 you're not going to know what capital projects you should
6 pick, you're not going to know what the impact on wait
7 time is going to be and so myself and three other
8 economists work quite a bit on using the data that are
9 available and getting that data out to industry so that
10 they have reliable information on what their crossing
11 times are going to be, what volumes are going to be, what
12 seasonal trends are and things like that. So it's a urban
13 legend that the data aren't out there. The data are out
14 there and if you invest the time in using the data,
15 there's -- there's a lot of -- there are a lot of rewards
16 to be reaped from that. And then I'll talk about some of
17 our wait time modeling and some of what the return on
18 investment on that is and then some of our Lean Six Sigma
19 projects in terms of -- in terms of again returns.
20 One of things that we do with our
21 stakeholder committee -- and our stakeholder committee
22 includes everybody from the MPO to TxDOT to -- to the
23 maquiladora associations and maquilas themselves -- we
24 spend a lot of time talking about what it is drives
25 traffic at our bridges and that's just not cargo trucks
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1 but POVs and pedestrians. So we look at what the drivers
2 of those are and U.S. industrial production drives
3 manufacturing employment. POV trips are driven in large
4 part by -- or in a substantial part by -- by the exchange
5 rate. We actually run a system of -- a systems of
6 equations to predict what the crossings are going to be,
7 what wait times are going to be for each of these
8 different things.
9 Again you can see what we -- we even run
10 systems of equations to predict what our retail sales are
11 going to be based on a number of factors.
12 We also look at commodity shipments working
13 with our -- working with our steering committee. Customs
14 brokers are interested in what's moving, the
15 transportistas are interested in what's moving so we do
16 quit a bit of that analysis as well.
17 And part of the reason that we do that isn't
18 just so that we can get ahead of capital projects, but
19 part of it is so that we can begin to -- so that we can
20 begin to think 10, 20 years out in terms of how do we
21 begin to make the case for funding for capital projects
22 and then begin to get into the planning for those. And
23 the way that we can begin to make that case is for
24 regional leaders to understand what the impacts are.
25 In terms of setting aside transportation
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1 dollars here, if you think about what the impact is in
2 just El Paso from maquiladora activity in Ciudad Juarez
3 just in the last year, if you look at the maquiladora
4 growth in Juarez in terms of the number of jobs that were
5 created, that led to 6,000 direct jobs in El Paso. 6,000
6 direct jobs once you add an employment multiplier to that
7 comes out to between 9- and 10,000 jobs. If El Paso did
8 nothing else -- meaning no economic incentives for
9 businesses or other things -- all of El Paso's job growth
10 was solely due to the maquiladora expansion in
11 Ciudad Juarez. And if you look at the Texas Workforce
12 Commission numbers, that's absolutely the case because all
13 of the job growth is in the industries that are tied to --
14 to the maquiladoras like transportation and warehousing
15 and finance and real estate and things like that.
16 So we -- like I said we spent a lot of time
17 looking at what -- what volumes are going to be so that we
18 can report wait times to transportistas, to everybody
19 who's involved in border -- in border trade and -- and we
20 use -- and these are some of the data sets that we use.
21 Vehicles. Same deal. Coming out of the
22 great recession, we've gone from nine million to 12
23 mill- -- to 12 million POVs and you can see that there at
24 the end of the slide.
25 Pedestrians we do the same thing. This is
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1 important to our retailers downtown, they want to know
2 what they can expect in terms of crossing volumes because
3 that's what -- that's the lifeblood of their business.
4 And then one of the other things we do with
5 regional planning is we know that we need capital
6 projects, like Bob and -- and Mike were talking about, but
7 we also need to do other -- other things like staffing.
8 And one of the partnerships that we have is with Customs
9 and Border Patrol. This coming fiscal year, we're going
10 to spend about $2.2 million of city of El Paso money on
11 overtime for Customs and Border Patrol agents because we
12 want to make sure that we're expediting truck traffic,
13 POVs and pedestrian trips and that program so far has
14 worked so we've -- we've actually been able to reduce wait
15 times for cargo trucks by 15 percent, we've reduced wait
16 times for POVs by 14 percent. Our preliminary estimates
17 for pedestrians is that the P3 program has probably
18 reduced wait times for pedestrians by about 35 percent.
19 And you can see that here. This -- these
20 are just the before and after charts where you can see
21 that if working with CBP in terms of queue management, if
22 we can begin to get ahead of that queue and staff for --
23 for overtime, there are significant positive impacts to
24 reducing or to doing overtime to -- in terms of fitting
25 actual CBP agents out at the bridges.
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1 This is the modeling I talked about. You
2 were talking about not having data in terms of being able
3 to project. The data exists for every -- every port
4 crossing to be able to do this. So if you -- the way we
5 model here in terms of what volumes are going to be in
6 terms of wait times they're going to be, every port can
7 do it, the entire state can do it and standardize it
8 because the data are there to do it.
9 And that's how we can tell what -- which of
10 our programs are working, whether it's a capital project,
11 whether it's overtime with CBP. We're actually able to
12 measure just what our wait time impacts are with CBP
13 through that modeling effort and like I said we're
14 estimating 15 percent for cargo trucks, we're estimating
15 about 14 percent for -- for POVs. If it's a 90-minute
16 queue, that saves every single car, those 12 million cars
17 about 12.6 minutes.
18 Other regional planning -- and this is one
19 of the ones that again you can do at every single port
20 where you talk about whether it's an infrastructure issue,
21 is it a CBP issue, in terms of not having staffing,
22 every -- every port should have one of these what are
23 call- -- what's a value stream map, a process map so that
24 you can know exactly where the bottlenecks are.
25 And then this is -- this is one of the ones
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1 that we're the most proud of because when we went to
2 SANDAG, SANDAG's not even here yet in terms of how they're
3 measuring wait times. You can get tracked by your cell
4 phone and if you're complaining at your bridges that you
5 don't have accurate wait times for every segment of the
6 crossing, if you're a commercial trucker, if you don't
7 know how long it takes for POV trips, one of the ways to
8 solve that problem is through cr- -- through crowd
9 sourcing. So what we've done is we've contracted with
10 Metropia and Metropia uses crowd source data, meaning data
11 from people who are carrying their cell phones, so they
12 track you as you're crossing the bridge. You get a large
13 enough sample size and suddenly you have really accurate
14 wait times. And so not only does Metropia finally solve
15 the complete crossing time wait time problem because their
16 tracking you using your phone, the other thing that
17 Metropia does is it pays you to take a trip at a different
18 time so that you're reducing congestion at peak times. So
19 if -- if you're going to try -- if you're going to cross
20 the bridge at eight o'clock, but the wait time is an hour
21 and a half, Metropia will incentivize you to take that
22 trip at seven o'clock so that you can get a 30-minute wait
23 time instead. And it incentivizes you through things like
24 Target gift cards, Walmart gift cards, other things like
25 that all built into the app and that's part of our
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1 contract with -- with Metropia. And you can see some of
2 gift card or some of the incentive things that will -- and
3 we'll actually be having the -- the drivers of the cargo
4 trucks using their cell phones to track their trips.
5 Fast, standard, you name it, and they'll get basically
6 paid for running the app while they're -- while they're
7 crossing. And then we'll find -- and then we'll have
8 accurate wait times for each segment of the trip.
9 And then -- because we're talking about
10 regional planning, regional planning doesn't work unless
11 you have all of your partners participating and for us we
12 have everybody from what used to be Promo Friend, it's now
13 the state of Chihuahua on our -- on our steering
14 committee, that's Arroyo Economico, Customs Broker's
15 Index, Southwest Maquila, even the Congressman's office
16 sits on our -- on our steering committee.
17 This steering committee is the steering
18 committee that we run all of our projects through so they
19 reviewed Metropia, they liked it, refined it, put it
20 out -- put it out so that we could purchase it and get it
21 out. New Website that's going to consolidate all of our
22 bridge data, they reviewed it, approved it, put it to
23 council, council paid -- council approved, that's the next
24 project coming out. They look at capital projects.
25 They're the experts in what works in terms of what's going
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1 to reduce wait times. They review the capital projects,
2 pick the capital projects and those are the ones that get
3 referred to council for funding.
4 That -- that steering committee has reviewed
5 22 projects and those 22 projects -- of those 22 projects,
6 we have eight in preliminary design. Metropia is already
7 being built and then the Website is al- -- is already
8 being built so we've got ten of those 22 projects in
9 active development right now. Those are just the 22
10 projects.
11 Okay. That's all for me. I hand it over to
12 you.
13 MR. LOPEZ: Okay. Good afternoon,
14 everybody. I'm Nicolas Lopez from the office of planning
15 in Ciudad Juarez. I want to show you in this
16 presentation -- this presentation.
17 Okay. There is the presentation.
18 Will you please go back two -- two slides.
19 Okay. Well, we'll see these five items, the
20 highway corridors in the Mexican side, the border region,
21 the Ciudad Juarez points of queue, the Ciudad Juarez
22 master plan and the projects that have been included in
23 all -- in those master plans.
24 Okay. Seeing this slide we can imagine one
25 of the questions that have been -- have been done here.
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1 Why? The -- the cargo -- why the freight use more Laredo
2 than Ciudad Juarez-El Paso region. This is the two main
3 highway and road systems in the -- in Mexico. And the
4 whole -- this is the last one is the Mexico 45 highway and
5 the right one is the Mexico 057 highway. All the -- all
6 the industry projects, all the industry groups that have
7 been produced in the industrial cities south Mexico in
8 the -- around Mexico City, Guadalajara, Queretaro or
9 El Bajio or even -- even the La Laguna in Torreon, they
10 have to choose their path to get into the states. Then
11 someone say here, the path to the -- to the across Laredo
12 is the shortest way.
13 This is it the region of Juarez and -- and
14 Chihuahua and how it's linked to the whole country, whole
15 Mexico. We have the (speaking Spanish), the Highway 45
16 from Juarez to Mexico, it's the main -- the main access to
17 the United States, but it isn't -- it has been developed
18 on east/west corridor from Mazatlan to Matamoros that can
19 distribute the freight for each one of the corridors.
20 Here is the state of Chihuahua in the
21 north -- or the Juarez-El Paso region and how the -- the
22 state government have been invest in highways around all
23 the state to move the cargo, to move the production -- the
24 industry production through the points of entry mainly in
25 Juarez-El Paso region.
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1 In this -- in this slide we can see the
2 Juarez municipality in this map and how the financial
3 course location and have a great opportunities -- trade
4 opportunities with two states. We have border with
5 New Mexico and Texas and we have five point of entries,
6 Jeronimo -- well, Paso del Norte and Reforma, they are one
7 way. And Paso del Norte is northbound and Reforma is
8 southbound. Bridge of the America, Zaragoza and the
9 newest Guadalupe-Tornillo [sic]. Guadalupe-Tornillo is
10 not on Juarez municipality, it's a Guadalupe municipality,
11 but to access that point of entry, you have to cross
12 across -- you have to cross the Juarez municipality.
13 Over those points of entry, all the cargo
14 from -- from -- generated inside Juarez or came from the
15 south of Mexico are connected to all the highways in the
16 United States through the I-10, through the artery through
17 the west side of the state or through the I-10 and I-20
18 through the -- to the -- across the Texas and the midwest
19 and east of the United States.
20 Okay. Here we can see that Juarez is the
21 most populated and economically developed in Chihuahua.
22 And we can see here how the -- how the
23 regional sites over Juarez are in development. We have
24 the San Agustin super on the inside, we have Ciudad Juarez
25 Horaciamente (phonetic) on the south side and we have
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1 San Jeronimo in the west side in the border with
2 New Mexico.
3 Okay. This is the master plan for
4 Ciudad Juarez and as you can see, all the points of entry
5 are distributed in the border.
6 And we can see here the projected zones on
7 the border region up here. We have San Jeronimo, Santa
8 Teresa on the one side border with New Mexico. We have
9 the central zone -- historic zone. Like Michael said we
10 have great relationship between the historic districts
11 downtown with the transportation and the stores and
12 San Agustin on the east side.
13 Okay. Here are the border master plan and
14 the Juarez master plan the mid-term and long-term
15 progressional impact proposals.
16 First, we have the Samalayuca-Guadalupe
17 Highway, this one. We'll communicate the Mexico 45
18 Highway to the -- to the Guadalupe-Tornillo point of
19 entry. The state of Chihuahua government already have the
20 preliminary design of this -- of this highway to access to
21 the point of entry to Samalayuca or Guadalupe-Tornillo.
22 As I said before, to get into the -- to reach the
23 Guadalupe-Tornillo point of entry you have to cross the
24 city of Juarez. Okay. We have the Libramiento
25 Independencia Highway. It's a communication between
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1 Mexico 45 Highway to reach the Zaragoza-Ysleta point of
2 entry.
3 Then we have the Juan Pablo Segundo, Juan
4 Pablo Segundo, that communicate along the border from the
5 Americas point of entry through Zaragoza point of entry
6 through San Agustin and even through Caseta City to
7 Tornillo-Guadalupe.
8 Another highway is the 16 of September
9 Avenue that it bypass the Anapra zone in Juarez that joins
10 the point -- Paso del Norte Bridge to San Jeronimo-Santa
11 Teresa point of entry. And at last the di- -- Diego
12 Highway that link Mexico 45 Highway to Libramiento then
13 San Agustin-Valdivia long-term regional impact.
14 Talking about rail, we are working with our
15 friends of New Mexico with the rail by -- rail by pass
16 Samalayuca-Jeronimo that begins here in Samalayuca and
17 reach the San Jeronimo-Santa Teresa point of entry. At
18 this time all the exportation and the importation -- all
19 the exports and imports from the United States are rail
20 facilities to the Urba (phonetic) zone of Juarez. This
21 proposal will help us to -- to reduce the risk that
22 population of Juarez are impacted with.
23 Then the government rail corridor represent
24 operations with highways for the inhabitants of Juarez.
25 The import in Mexico operation by rail (indiscernible) by
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1 safety issues.
2 Well, as a long-term regional project, we
3 have also the freight channel that link Zara- -- to the
4 city of Juarez through Zaragoza-Ysleta point of entry
5 using the freight channel technology. All these project
6 are include in the master plans of the city of Juarez.
7 Also we have planned other points of entry
8 that we have called reports that are located one in
9 Anapra, other one is the Cesar Chavez y communicate the
10 Avenida de las Torres con el -- con Border Highway to
11 Cesar Chavez and El Paso.
12 Thank you very much.
13 MS. PROZZI: Thank you very much. We have
14 about two minutes for questions if any member have a
15 question.
16 MR. SCHWEBEL: This is Gerry Schwebel.
17 Could you elaborate a little bit more on that freight
18 shuttle technology, you know, that you just presented.
19 How does -- how is that going to work?
20 MR. LOPEZ: The freight shuttle technology
21 is a -- it's a proposal that have been development here in
22 the United States but, it's like our rail -- our rail that
23 can move cargo containers using technology in an overpass
24 over on actual highways in Mexico. Then all these
25 technology have to be reviewed at the port getting to the
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1 cargo trade -- cargo to -- to be bought -- to have a
2 faster inspections in the border.
3 MR. SCHWEBEL: So it's a concept. It's
4 not -- it's not -- is it approved or is it?
5 MS. MAYS: Actually let me just comment on
6 that a little bit. The freight shuttle technology is
7 being spearheaded by TTI -- by TTI Texas A&M and the
8 gentleman's name is Steve Roop. They actually have
9 that -- the picture you saw there, they have it in College
10 Station, you can actually go see it, they have prototype
11 there. And what they're doing with this region is they're
12 trying to pilot it here and do border applications so
13 that's what they're going to be doing here. And that's
14 what -- remember Mr. Russell mentioned that he's
15 spending -- he spent over a million dollars and that's
16 what he was referring to on the technology piece so
17 they're trying to do a prototype here. But the technology
18 is being done at College Station by A&M.
19 MR. SCHWEBEL: And is that tied at all with
20 the -- the CBP pi- -- pilot project that they in
21 Chihuahua?
22 MS. MAYS: I'm not sure -- you know, I'm not
23 sure exactly. I don't -- I don't think so. Yeah.
24 MR. CASCOS: Anything else?
25 MR. SAENZ: I'm just curious, Mr. Secretary,
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1 besides on the bridge side, on the Mexican bridge side,
2 who -- who actually owns the bridge and how is that
3 operated and how are the funds split? It's my
4 understanding that the federal, the state and the local
5 people participate in some way through some sort of trust.
6 Is that -- is that the structure here as well?
7 MR. LOPEZ: Okay. All the -- all the point
8 of entry on the Mexican side belongs to the federation,
9 belong to the federal government to intervene. There is a
10 new contract that the money, just the money and -- the
11 operations and the maintenance of the infra- --
12 infrastructure are given to the government of the state,
13 the state government of Chihuahua, in the state of
14 Chihuahua. The state of Chihuahua have the operation and
15 the maintenance of the infrastructure. That's why the
16 government of Chihuahua, all the tolls that have been paid
17 in [sic] the bridges belongs to the state of Chihuahua.
18 MR. SAENZ: Ciudad Juarez, do they get a
19 cut?
20 MR. LOPEZ: There is a -- I don't know how
21 we say in English. (Speaking Spanish) that --
22 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Trust.
23 MR. SCHWEBEL: Trust.
24 MR. LOPEZ: A trust that all the money --
25 all the -- all the funds operations and maintenance goes
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1 to the infrastructure in Juarez even though the Ojinaga --
2 even the -- including the Ojinaga, including the
3 Guadalupe, including all the point of entry here in the
4 region of Juarez.
5 MR. SAENZ: To be used by the city of Juarez
6 for all their -- the infrastructure or just that bridge
7 infrastructure?
8 MR. LOPEZ: No, in general. You could do
9 highways, you could do public transportation, everything,
10 not just the bridges.
11 MR. SAENZ: Thank you very much.
12 MR. CASCOS: All right. If -- we're going
13 to move on now so we can stay on schedule. We're going to
14 break for lunch and I'm trying to get back as I mentioned
15 earlier. So we're going to try to do the -- we're going
16 to do the lunch speaker and do the lunch and then we're
17 going to keep going quickly so we can get out of here
18 by -- by 2:30 or so. All right?
19 Okay. So everybody, bon appetite.
20 (A break taken.)
21 MR. CORONADO: Well, good afternoon.
22 MS. MAYS: Yeah, you can -- you can
23 introduce yourself. Welcome.
24 MR. CORONADO: Thank you. And it's a
25 pleasure to be here. My name is Roberto Coronado and I'm
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1 the officer in charge of the El Paso branch of the Federal
2 Reserve Bank of Dallas and so on behalf of the city,
3 welcome to El Paso. It's great to be a host to many of
4 you that are traveling from throughout the state of Texas.
5 I would like to introduce one of my colleagues who is in
6 charge of putting the presentation together, Mary Cruz de
7 Leon, who is also our -- part of our research team here in
8 El Paso and so both of us worked on this presentation
9 together. To be honest with you, she worked more on it
10 than I did so she deserves all the credit for it. But
11 what I thought about doing today is to give you a flavor
12 and give you a perspective of what are some of the recent
13 trends that we see out there with respect U.S.-Mexico
14 bilateral trade flows, then moving to a regional
15 perspective and talk about Texas-Mexico relationship and
16 then try to bring a little bit more local to concentrate
17 along the Texas-Mexico border region. So I'll start
18 with -- with a big perspective and then move on into a
19 more regional and local perspective.
20 This is a picture that I believe you've seen
21 too many times by now. This is a picture of bilateral
22 trade flows between the U.S. and Mexico going back to
23 1974. There are a few main takeaways from this picture.
24 The first one is how big is trade today. It's about 530,
25 540 billion a year. This is adding exports plus imports.
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1 But sometimes it's hard to put in perspective how does
2 100 -- $540 billion look like. But what if I were to tell
3 you that U.S.-Mexico trade flows it's about 1 million per
4 minute 24/7. That's the size of the magnitude of the
5 bilateral trade relationship between both nations. And
6 then you see the different slopes. There are different --
7 three, three areas of -- three areas between the bilateral
8 trade relationship. Of course after NAFTA, this local --
9 that line really picked and has grown tremendously. But
10 then Mexico in 1987 opened its borders to trade and you
11 actually see that accelerate somewhat.
12 The other thing that's important to know is
13 that over the last two, two and a half years global trade
14 has slowed down. The amount of trade across the globe has
15 slowed down. And the U.S.-Mexico relationship or
16 bilateral trade relationship is not the exception to it.
17 And you see it -- toward the end of the line, you actually
18 see that today we're below trend.
19 Looking at a more current perspective. This
20 is since 2000 to today and you can see how we are below
21 trend today. The composition of trade is at the pie chart
22 today the number one sector between both nations is
23 automotive and autos, it's about $100 billion per year
24 worth of trade which has become very important over the
25 last several years. But then you see other sectors in
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1 there, electronics, telecom, office equipment, machinery.
2 And of course energy and commodities are important as
3 well.
4 So the question is why has the U.S.-Mexico
5 trade flow slowed down? And when we look -- we have data
6 up to June of this year so when we look into the first
7 half of 2016 versus the first half of 2015, total trade
8 flows between the U.S. and Mexico have slowed down at
9 about $4 billion which is not very much but nonetheless
10 it's about -- it's a small decline. But the bulk of the
11 decline is due to lower commodity trading, lower energy
12 trading. And it's not only because of lower quantity but
13 lower prices. So the fact that oil today is sitting
14 around 40, $42 per barrel is showing up in the bilateral
15 trade relationship here. And so we -- it could be
16 misleading to tell you, you know, we're below trend.
17 Well, we're below trend because there's new environment
18 when it comes to the energy sector. Most of the sectors
19 that are in the manufacturing space -- which is what
20 matters to many of the trade relationship that exist
21 between the Texas-Mexico border -- those sectors continue
22 to do relatively well in spite of the slow down in global
23 trade flows.
24 As I mentioned before after NAFTA, of course
25 trade between both nations and between Mexico and Canada
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1 and Canada and the U.S. boomed tremendously but so has the
2 synchronization of the business cycles. So this is
3 industrial production for both Mexico and the U.S., this
4 is year-to-year growth going back to 1980. And you can
5 see that after NAFTA, these two lines do move together,
6 it's one by one. And so for those of you who like
7 statistics, the correlation coefficient here is pretty
8 strong, it's about 70 percent. Before NAFTA that was
9 about 20 percent correlation coefficient. So for better
10 or worse, both economies are moving in the same direction
11 as far as the business cycles.
12 Yes.
13 MR. VALE: Doesn't look like the correlation
14 in first couple of years. What happened there?
15 MR. CORONADO: In '94 there was a so-called
16 tequila crisis and Mexico went through a significant
17 financial crisis. It was mostly domestically induced in
18 Mexico that propelled through Latin America and many other
19 emerging economies, but the U.S. economy was doing okay.
20 It was a one shot to the Mexican economy basically.
21 So for Mexico, U.S. is the top number one
22 trading partner for the U.S., Mexico is the third top
23 trading partner. But when you look into border states,
24 California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, Mexico is the
25 top destination for its -- for their exports. So in this
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1 slide what we have is the dollar value of those states'
2 exports to Mexico and in parentheses is the share of the
3 exports that go to Mexico that show overall state exports.
4 Mexico is the number one trading partner for those four
5 border states. And so Texas, on an annual basis, sends
6 roughly $100 billion worth of goods to Mexico south of the
7 Rio Grande.
8 So looking a little bit more closely into
9 Texas and its relationship with the state, this is a chart
10 that shows export performance for the U.S. in red. This
11 is excluding Texas and blue -- Texas is in blue. Why do
12 we exclude Texas from the U.S. numbers? Well, suffice it
13 to say, Texas is big and when you look into U.S. exports,
14 $2 out of -- out of $10 that U.S. exports come from Texas.
15 So Texas it the largest exporting state in the nation. So
16 passed California around 2005, 2006. And you can see that
17 exports in the U.S. have slowed down, have been moving
18 sideways for the most part for a number of -- for a number
19 of years. Texas exports have come down significantly over
20 the last couple of years. This is a combination I believe
21 to a number of factors. One of them is, you know,
22 commodity exports, energy exports are important for Texas.
23 As the prices have come down so have the value of those
24 exports. But, too, Texas is connected globally, not only
25 to Mexico but to the global economy and we've seen that
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1 the dollar has been very strong over this period pushing
2 some breaks into export growth. And, two, we have also
3 seen weak global demand for U.S. exports in general. So
4 once you put together a strength dollar that is very
5 strong and weak global demand, you've actually seen how
6 some of the exports by Texas from Texas have slowed down
7 in recent years.
8 This is a performance by sector. You see
9 that green line shooting up tremendously over the last
10 several years. This is commodities, this is energy,
11 petroleum exports. And the green line actually coming
12 down to a significant pace, again mostly driven by lower
13 energy prices. But if you pay attention to -- the other
14 lines at the bottom of the chart, you see most of them
15 slowing down to some extent again the result of the
16 strength of the dollar and weak global demand.
17 This chart shows Texas exports to Mexico.
18 You've seen growth since the end of the so-called great
19 recession in 2009-2010 towards 2014 and that's when you
20 start seeing some of the slow down in growth. And we've
21 seen it pick up in Texas exports to Mexico over the last
22 six months or so and Mexico is -- again captures close to
23 40 percent, but you see the other breakdown, Canada,
24 China, Asia, excluding China, is important, Latin America,
25 the European Union. So Texas is well connected to other
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1 countries other than Mexico.
2 This is the breakdown of the composition of
3 exports from Texas to Mexico, those $100 billion that I
4 mentioned before. You see a lot of manufacturing products
5 but commodities are important. Those blue sectors that
6 you see in there, whether it's crude oil or petrochemicals
7 or refined products or rubber, those account for roughly
8 30, 35 percent of overall exports from Texas to Mexico.
9 So that particular sector is quite -- quite relevant
10 between Mexico and the U.S.
11 Where do Texas exports go? When you look
12 into a map of Mexico, this is where most of the exports
13 go. As you can imagine, they predominantly go to border
14 states to Texas, but then you also have some states such
15 as Jalisco, Guanajuato, Estado de Mexico and Mexico City,
16 those are big states that have big economies therefore
17 have a strong demand for products from Texas so --
18 Now flipping the coin a little bit. Where
19 do those exports come from, where do they originate? We
20 now have data through the International Trade
21 Administration and they link exports at the city level.
22 There's some caveats to this data, but nonetheless it'll
23 give you a pulse, it'll give you sense of how big certain
24 markets, certain cities are with respect to general
25 exports.
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1 The number one city in the U.S. that
2 generates the more exports is Houston. LA is there,
3 Detroit is there, New York is there, but Houston is by
4 far -- Houston's exports to the world are roughly about
5 120 billion a year. But then you see in here Dallas,
6 San Antonio, El Paso and many other cities that --
7 throughout the state that do actually generate quite a bit
8 of exports to -- to the rest of the world.
9 About a year, year and a half ago, a couple
10 of my colleagues at the Dallas fed did a research analysis
11 in reference to the composition of Texas exports and how
12 significant are those exports, what is the composition,
13 but more importantly what is the level of competitiveness
14 that Texas exports have vis-a-vis other countries and
15 vis-a-vis other states within the U.S. And so they looked
16 into the top 15 sectors which are listed in this table.
17 They comprise roughly 80 percent of the overall Texas
18 exports to the world. And while this chart is busy, let
19 me point out a couple of things. They are ranked in the
20 magnitude of how significant -- so for example the first
21 sector in there is petroleum and gold products, they
22 account for roughly 23 percent of Texas exports back in
23 2002. And so you see the different compositions and how
24 significant these sectors are. But then you see some that
25 is RCA, this is the relative comparative advantage. This
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1 is looking into Texas exports and how competitive --
2 competitive they are vis-a-vis the rest of the world. The
3 higher this number is, the more competitive they are. And
4 they also looked into what has happened between 2002 and
5 2012. And I can tell you that manufacturing exports in
6 Texas remain fairly competitive -- particularly
7 automotive-related exports -- and the ones that come at
8 the top of the list are energy-related exports. It's not
9 only -- only crude oil, but it's in fact all the refined
10 products and all the process products through energy that
11 are exported by the state and they continue to gain a
12 level of competitiveness at the global -- at the global
13 market.
14 When you look into these; 15 sectors, it's a
15 mixed bag. Half of these sectors have gained
16 competitiveness and half of them have lost competitiveness
17 between 2002 and 2012. The sectors that won and improved
18 their level of competitiveness on, like I said before,
19 it's energy and automotive transportation. The sectors
20 that lost ground in the global markets is sectors around
21 aerospace and electronics.
22 My colleagues also looked into -- so when we
23 looked at Texas and when we compare Texas to the global
24 economy, where are the largest -- where are the strongest
25 competitors to Texas exports? Can we look across
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1 different countries and look into the composition of their
2 exports and try to see what are the ranking of and how
3 competitive they are vis-a-vis Texas?
4 So this is a list of those countries that
5 compete head to head with Texas when it comes to its
6 exports' basket of goods. Of course the U.S. is the
7 number one competitor because the U.S. and the rest of the
8 states, the rest of the 49 states, they do produce and
9 export a lot of singular products that those in Texas
10 exports. But in here you see Japan, Singapore, Korea and
11 you see a ratio between zero and .7 in this case. For
12 example Japan, their export market portfolio it's about
13 50 percent similar to that of Texas. And you see at the
14 bottom of the list Hungary and that is about 20,
15 22 percent. So this is who Texas competes in the global
16 market.
17 Now what about the domestic market? And
18 this one some of our fellow Americans might feel
19 their feelings are hurt. Right? There are three states
20 in which Texas competes head to head when it comes to
21 exports: Illinois, Ohio and California. And again
22 roughly 50 percent of Illinois exports are very similar to
23 those of Texas. And Ohio is about 44, 45 percent,
24 California is just a little bit over 40 percent.
25 Yes, ma'am.
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1 MS. MAINWARING: So I keep hearing that
2 Texas is competing with the other gulf states and yet
3 there's not a single gulf state on there.
4 MR. CORONADO: It's competing with the gulf
5 states when it comes to petrochemicals and energy, but
6 when you look into those 15 categories, there is a lot of
7 manufacturing products and these are the states that
8 predominantly produce those. Which is the same story to
9 some extent when you look into the countries. Many of
10 these, in fact most of them, are not energy producing
11 countries. And people would expect that Texas competes
12 head to head with energy producing countries to some
13 extent but because Texas exports are well diversified, not
14 only about energy, manufacturing products do -- do play a
15 significant role.
16 And so the question you may have, has Texas
17 gained competitiveness vis-a-vis these states? And the
18 good news is that Texas has gained competitiveness over --
19 between 2002 and 2012 which is the study -- the years of
20 which the study was conducted. California and Ohio have
21 lost global competitiveness. And Illinois has pretty much
22 remained flat. So Texas has made significant inroads when
23 it comes to competing to these states for man- -- from a
24 manufacturing perspective and -- and for that matter from
25 an energy perspective exports as well. So Texas exports
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1 are well diversified. Petroleum products and
2 petrochemicals come at the top of the list as the most
3 competitive. But then Texas has strong industries too in
4 manufacturing, particularly in automotive. Like I said
5 before, when you look into electronics and aerospace,
6 Texas has not done that well, but in automotive Texas has
7 done extremely well. And then you start putting the
8 pieces of the puzzle together and you begin to wonder to
9 what extent has the relationship Texas has with Mexico has
10 helped Texas become more competitive in the automotive
11 market, global market, clearly because of all the inroads
12 that Mexico has made in that particular sector. So Mexico
13 has become a strategic partner for Texas when it comes to
14 automotive in particular.
15 Now bringing things a little bit --
16 Yes, sir.
17 MR. VALE: What -- what are your instincts
18 telling you about where Texas will be at if you take the
19 current price of oil and gas and adjust that in terms of
20 these numbers?
21 MR. CORONADO: You mean as far as exports
22 and as far as --
23 MR. VALE: Yes.
24 MR. CORONADO: I think Texas has to continue
25 to gain competitiveness in petrochemicals in spite of the
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1 lower energy prices so I don't expect that level of
2 competitiveness to have eroded because of the low prices.
3 Automotive continues to make significant -- it has become
4 even more significant since 2012. Just to give you an
5 idea, today Mexico produces about three and a half or has
6 the capacity to produce about three and a half million
7 units per year. By 2020 Mexico will have the installed
8 capacity to produce five and a half million units. And so
9 to Texas will play a significant role in the growth in the
10 Mexico automotive sector. And so I would expect that as
11 we looked into current data, when it comes -- when it
12 becomes available, automotive will continue to remain
13 competitive.
14 I was surprised by the fact that the
15 aerospace exports from Texas have lost competitiveness.
16 That might actually change going forward, again, as Mexico
17 continues to make significant inroads there that might
18 actually move Texas into a more competitive state.
19 Electronics is a difficult sector, it's very
20 globally competitive and Asia has gained a lot of market
21 share in that sector and has Mexico has lost
22 competitiveness there and so has Texas. So I would expect
23 going forward that electronics, we might actually not see
24 a lot of momentum in that sector. But automotive,
25 petrochemicals and aerospace, I would expect those to
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1 continue to move going forward.
2 MR. VALE: The energy opening up in Mexico
3 and even though it's going very slowly with some of the
4 products they're allowing to really be imported by the
5 private sector, do you see that picking up what's going to
6 be dropped off by Petrolio Mexicano (phonetic)?
7 MR. CORONADO: I would expect that to be the
8 case, but to your point the implementation of the reform,
9 it's been -- has been gradual and will continue to be
10 gradual going forward in Mexico. But as they continue to
11 open this sector to foreign investment, I would expect
12 Texas to be well positioned to leverage that opportunity
13 so -- but it's going to take time. I believe it's going
14 to take time and we've seen that already that it's
15 actually going to some extent at a fairly slow pace.
16 Now, looking a little bit more closely, this
17 is a table where we ranked ports of entry. There's
18 nothing in here that will shock you or surprise you. This
19 is something that you knew fairly well. Laredo is the
20 largest port of entry between the U.S.-Mexico. And the
21 U.S. and Mexico, Texas is the second one. Texas captures
22 about 75 percent of U.S.-Mexico trade flows so that
23 corridor is very important for the bilateral of trade
24 relationship.
25 This is a chart that shows the trend of
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1 trade between these four ports of entry, Laredo, El Paso,
2 Brownsville and McAllen. And you can see that pretty much
3 all of them have slowed down to some extent. El Paso and
4 Laredo did actually fairly well over the last number of
5 years and we've seen how The Valley, either Brownsville or
6 McAllen, have struggled to -- have been declining for
7 quite some time and have been basically leveling off and
8 have -- still waiting to -- for takeoff.
9 The composition of trade along the
10 U.S.-Mexico -- sorry -- along the Texas-Mexico border
11 region is predominantly automotive related. If -- when
12 you look at the overall Texas-Mexico trade, it's
13 significantly concentrated in autos. And so these charts
14 or these pie charts preview the breakdown of overall
15 imports and exports at these ports of entry and you can
16 see how blue it's very significant and blue in this
17 particular case is transportation is automotive.
18 A lot of the research that we've conducted
19 at the Dallas fed, particularly here in El Paso, it's
20 along the lines of cross-border integration and
21 cross-border economic impacts. And question typically is,
22 well, we -- Mexico, Ciudad Juarez and the state of
23 Chihuahua, does have a lot of manufacturing activity going
24 on. The question is does that activity generate any
25 growth, if any, to a city like El Paso? And what about
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1 the activity in Reynosa, would that generate economic
2 activity for -- for McAllen? And so on and so forth. So
3 what we've done at the Dallas fed is we've looked into the
4 question if there's a causation effect. Does maquiladora
5 activities here in Juarez generate growth in El Paso?
6 Does maquiladora activity in Matamoros generate growth in
7 Brownsville?
8 And the question [sic] is yes. They do
9 generate a lot of growth, a lot of employment growth.
10 These charts shows the health or the performance of the
11 maquiladora industry by looking at employment in these
12 four border cities: Nuevo Laredo, Juarez, Matamoros,
13 Reynosa. You can see they're moving upwards for the most
14 part. Are -- the reports that we hear is that maquilas
15 being -- across the border are really growing tremendously
16 in double digits for the last several months, in fact for
17 the last couple of years, and some of the reports is that
18 Juarez and Reynosa for that matter are struggling keeping
19 up with growth and they are actually facing a significant
20 shortage of labor. Some of the analysts that we've heard
21 actually indicate that in Juarez alone, there's about a
22 20,000 workers that are needed today and simply are not
23 able to be found. Reynosa's numbers are around 17,000
24 people. You know, the border region has not seen this
25 boom in manufacturing activity since the late '90s and
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1 there's a lot of possible explanations as to why the
2 shortage of labor remain to be a problem. But nonetheless
3 the point here is that growth has been fairly strong and
4 it has actually brought growth across the Rio Grande.
5 The question that you might have now is so
6 how -- what is the size of that growth and where has that
7 growth been concentrated? So when we looked into a
8 long -- long perspective, you know, from the early '90s to
9 the mid -- to the late 2000s and we calculate what we
10 economists call elasticities. Basically if you move
11 something here, what is the reaction on this other side?
12 So if you move 10 percent in output in
13 border cities grows by 10 percent, how much growth do you
14 observe in El Paso's labor market? And that 2.8 percent
15 which is the row at the top of the list -- at the top of
16 table. I'm sorry. McAllen is almost seven percent. So
17 maquilas in Reynosa grow 10 percent, employment in Rey- --
18 in Mat- -- in McAllen grows seven percent.
19 Just concentrating El Paso, it's 10 percent
20 growth there, three percent growth here. If you just do a
21 back-of-the-envelope calculation, you would actually come
22 up with an estimate that roughly one in four jobs created
23 in El Paso -- or over this period -- could be attributed
24 to the manufacturing activity across the border. It's one
25 in four of the delta of the -- not the overall stock of
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1 jobs, but the ones that have been created.
2 The next question you might have is where
3 are these jobs? Which sectors are we talking about? And
4 that's why we did the breakdown. And you see
5 transportation of course it's -- this is transportation
6 warehousing and logistic, by the way. It's not only
7 transportation, but it's a broader sector. That sector
8 you see the impact there again because you need trucks,
9 you need warehousing, you need logistics to move things in
10 and out of Mexico. But then you also see other sectors
11 such as services -- this is general business services and
12 fire. This is not the fire department, this is finance,
13 insurance and real estate, by the way. So all of these --
14 all of the job growth is in the service side of the
15 economy, not only transportation but services such as
16 insurance or accounting, legal, custom brokers, IT. So
17 when a company from the Midwest wants to relocate their
18 operations into Ciudad Juarez or Reynosa, they typically
19 have a real estate agent that is from Texas and so those
20 numbers are being picked up here.
21 Do you know how many people cross the
22 border? This is something that is fairly interesting.
23 We've done -- and I'll get back to the service side of the
24 economy in just a second, but let me elaborate a little
25 bit more -- I know you are probably more -- your emphasis
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1 is stronger on cargo and commercial transportation, but
2 personal vehicle transportation and cross-border crossings
3 are important.
4 This chart shows retail trade in these four
5 border cities, this overall region of trade. And in black
6 is the nominal peso-dollar exchange rate. Every time the
7 peso loses ground against the dollar. And this is not
8 just showing the data since 2000. I can go back to 1972
9 if you want and every time that back line jumps up,
10 there's a peso depreciation, retail along the border
11 drops. According to our research, on average 15 percent
12 of the retail trade in El Paso could be attributed to
13 Mexican shoppers. Now that's a net.
14 This is looking at too how much do they buy
15 here and how much do we by there? McAllen it 33 percent,
16 Laredo is 50 percent, Brownsville is 25 percent. So a
17 significant portion of the retail activities are
18 attributed to Mexican shoppers. And so every time the
19 peso loses ground against the dollar, of course their
20 purchasing power gets evaporated to some extent and
21 therefore they don't come as often, they don't spend as
22 much money.
23 Having said that, if you look towards the
24 end of the chart, you see a significant peso depreciation
25 over the last two, two and a half years. And still retail
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1 continues to be fairly strong. You see those lines come
2 down a little bit but not to a great extent, not what you
3 would expect given historical trends. The question is
4 why? Well, part of the answer is, I believe, is because
5 the strength of the manufacturing activity across the
6 border. While the peso has lost significant ground
7 against the dollar, you have a booming manufacturing
8 activity in Reynosa and in Ciudad Juarez so that is
9 upsetting some of the loss in purchasing power by those
10 Mexican shoppers. And so I would expect the incoming data
11 to continue to trend downward, but I'm very surprised to
12 this day that we have not seen a significant drop, as you
13 would expect, given historical -- historical trends.
14 So going back to this transition between
15 manufacture --
16 Yes, sir.
17 MR. VALE: Sam Vale. Along those same
18 lines, does the -- does the size of the population south
19 of the border, apart from the manufacturing, play a role
20 in that because it seems like that's a bigger indicator of
21 bridge crossings, not necessarily retail sales but
22 bridge -- bridge crossings.
23 MR. CORONADO: It does. It does. And so
24 if -- El Paso is the city that depends the least,
25 quote/unquote, on the cross-border shopper vis-a-vis the
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1 Rio Grande Valley, Laredo for a couple of reasons. El
2 Paso is somewhat of a larger city. And, two -- and most
3 importantly -- the Rio Grande Valley, Laredo has a city
4 that is over four million people which is Monterrey. And
5 so it's not only the shoppers from Reynosa and Matamoros
6 and Nuevo Laredo, but it's folks from interior of Mexico.
7 And to your point so Monterrey's not only a big city, but
8 it's a city who has high income levels by Mexican
9 standards. In fact the ZIP code with the largest per
10 capita income in Latin America is in Monterrey. And so
11 it's more people, deeper pockets, therefore they represent
12 a much larger share of the pie in the cross-border retail
13 in that part of the Texas border.
14 So we've seen a transition along the Texas
15 border cities from manufacturing to services and you can
16 see at one point 20 -- 26 years ago in El Paso in fact,
17 one in every five jobs were in manufacturing. Today it's
18 less than one in -- one in 10 actually -- less than one in
19 20. I'm sorry. Services growth has been very strong.
20 Manufacturing has been shrinking. Why? Because most of
21 the manufacturing has been migrating south of the
22 Rio Grande and so what the cities like El Paso and McAllen
23 have been concentrating on, it's on the service. And with
24 that we've seen an improvement of the per capita income
25 levels. This is the per capita income levels over time on
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1 these four border cities in Texas vis-a-vis the U.S.
2 So for example back in 1969, El Paso's per
3 capita income was about 78, 79 percent. And you've seen
4 an significant drop in the levels of per capita income
5 here and up to 2000 or so, that's when they bottomed out.
6 After that you've seen a gradual improvement. There's
7 been ups and downs but overall trend is positive. It
8 might be hard to see in the chart, but it's -- it's in
9 there. And we've done analysis to why. Why has the per
10 capita income levels improved in McAllen, in Brownsville,
11 in Laredo in El Paso? And the answer to the question is
12 it can be for the right reasons or going forward for the
13 not so right reasons. The right reasons are, you know,
14 the right industry means you are attracting the jobs that
15 you want to attract, high-end paying jobs demanding more
16 schooling so on and so forth. Or it could be because of
17 transfer payments. You know, Washington D.C. sent more
18 transfer payments and improves the per capita income.
19 And transfer payments do have a significant
20 impact. They continue to be important because of our
21 poverty and our income levels. But two-thirds of the
22 explanation behind the upward trend is in the industry
23 mix. It's growth in service sectors, sectors such as --
24 again, sectors that are related to cross-border trade and
25 cross-border manufacturing that have made an improvement.
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1 There's still a lot of -- a long way to go. We're still
2 having a significant low income levels along the border,
3 but nonetheless the trend is encouraging that we are
4 moving in the right direction, there's still plenty of
5 things to do on that front.
6 So to conclude, U.S.-Mexico trade flows
7 continue to grow and have grown tremendously. That has
8 led to a significant or more so a synchronization of the
9 business cycle between both nations. Texas leads the
10 nation in exports. The relationship with Mexico has
11 become fairly important as Texas is trying to gain
12 competitiveness globally and domestically, for that
13 matter. And the Texas-Mexico border I would argue now
14 plays a critical role in the North American manufacturing,
15 in the North American market in general, particularly when
16 it comes to -- when it comes to manufacturing.
17 And at that I will be more than happy to
18 answer any questions you might have.
19 MR. CASCOS: Does anybody have any question?
20 I think -- thank you for the presentation, I
21 thought that was very informative. And I think it just
22 substantiates my -- my comments that I made that, you
23 know, Texas continues to be the economic juggernaut of
24 this nation, you know. And I think those numbers show it.
25 You know just the other states combined, you know, Texas
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1 had more exports to Mexico than all the other states on
2 the border combined. So we continue to -- you know, to
3 prosper with that.
4 But anybody have an questions or commentary?
5 Nothing, Sam?
6 MR. VALE: Robert, you usually have this
7 presentation on your -- has it -- is it going to be on
8 your Webpage, on the -- on the Dallas?
9 MR. CORONADO: We will be more than happy to
10 make this available --
11 MR. CASCOS: There's a hard copy in your --
12 in your --
13 MS. MAYS: Yeah. And we'll put on the
14 Webpage as well.
15 MR. CORONADO: Yeah.
16 MS. MAYS: We do have a electronic copy of
17 this. And again, I want to echo, you know, the
18 Secretary's comments. Robert, really great presentation.
19 You had a lot of information. I was talking to some of my
20 colleagues here. We want to be using it, you might hear
21 from us, you know, about, you know, really how you
22 compilate the information, the data and some of the things
23 that you might help us with articulating some of the
24 things we brought up here that be -- can be useful for us
25 for our purposes for this committee and other bigger, you
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1 know, initiatives at TxDOT.
2 MR. CORONADO: We'll be happy to help any
3 way we can, absolutely.
4 MR. CASCOS: You know, as some -- some of
5 the leadership, you know, and Mayor -- Mayor is one about,
6 you know, talked about reaching out to other congressmen,
7 you know, other U.S. senators. This is information you
8 can provide to them as well. Along with the spiderweb
9 map, you can also provide something like this and it just
10 brings it into a different prospective.
11 Mayor?
12 MR. SAENZ: Yes, I was just going to mention
13 the --
14 MR. CASCOS: Okay.
15 MR. SAENZ: -- the improvements in per
16 capita income along the Texas border. Have we made a dent
17 on the poverty levels and on the -- the border counties
18 that previously are known for high poverty? Has there
19 been any improvement along those lines? Are we edging out
20 of poverty or -- or -- and if not, why not, if you have an
21 answer.
22 MR. CORONADO: We have, but the levels of
23 folks in poverty continue to be elevated. So on average
24 for those four border cities, they've gained, each of
25 them, about 10 percentage points as the share per capita
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1 income in those communities vis-a-vis the U.S. So it's a
2 10 percentage point gain. We're closing the gap. But the
3 gap still 35, 40 percentage points, I mean it's still
4 significant, but the trend is very encouraging.
5 MR. SAENZ: Yes. Do you have any
6 recommendation or anything, as mayors and public figures,
7 that we can toward the, you know, to -- to even narrow the
8 gap?
9 MR. CORONADO: We do have and we've done
10 some analysis when it comes to -- from a workforce
11 development perspective in looking to the labor markets
12 and educational perform- -- educational attainment. And
13 we've actually done the analysis for all of the border
14 cities looking into the clusters of economic activity that
15 are prevalent in those communities. And I'll be more than
16 happy to sit with you and talk about your community in
17 particular and see what -- how can you use and how can you
18 read some of that information and hopefully it will be
19 beneficial to you.
20 MR. SAENZ: Thank you, sir.
21 MR. CASCOS: Anything else?
22 MR. CORONADO: Thank you for the
23 opportunity.
24 MR. CASCOS: Robert, thank you very much.
25 Our next topic border crossing challenges
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1 and wait times, infrastructure issues, donation,
2 acceptance program at El Paso. Mr. Hector Mancha. Thank
3 you for being here. Director of field operations El Paso
4 CBP field office. And don't start bombarding him with why
5 are wait lines so long.
6 MR. MANCHA: Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
7 MR. CASCOS: Why are wait lines so long?
8 Thank you for being here.
9 MR. MANCHA: BTAC committee members, thank
10 you for -- for having me here for giving CBP some time
11 here during today's briefings. Actually as I sat there
12 today listening to the briefings and anything that
13 pertained to port of entries, you know, there's not too
14 much that I can actually, you know, contest and argue.
15 And so -- but I think it does provide CBP an opportunity
16 to put things into perspective. And again keep in mind
17 this is a perspective that is mainly geared on -- from an
18 operational perspective what's happening at the ports of
19 entry.
20 Again, my name's Hector Mancha. I'm the
21 field office director for the El Paso field office. The
22 El Paso field office covers all of west Texas, all the way
23 far east, all the way to the port of Presidio and I go all
24 the way to -- the entire state of New Mexico. I've got 11
25 international bridge crossings, we've got three airports,
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1 general aviation airports, and two rail interchanges.
2 The majority of the challenges that I'm
3 going to speaking on today pertain to the biggest port, my
4 area of responsibility, which is the port of El Paso. So
5 when they asked me to talk about some of the cross-border
6 challenges -- and like I mentioned that the -- challenges
7 that were mentioned earlier today, you know, improving
8 levels of congestion to me is -- that translates to
9 increased work loads. Inadequate federal staffing of
10 POEs. You know, only the position that I -- that I sit
11 in, I don't really talk about my staffing needs in a
12 public forum, you know, but that is a reality, you know.
13 As we start seeing increases, you know, in -- in the
14 volume of trucks that we're seeing at our ports of entry,
15 that translates to having adequate staffing to be able to
16 service the traffic. Outdated technologies I heard. I
17 think that CBP really has gone out of its way in trying to
18 incorporate new technology in the way we do business.
19 As I saw the presentations this morning and
20 this afternoon, one thing that came to mind is, you know,
21 maybe I should have done a Power Point and I didn't. But
22 I do carry some extra material with me and I do have a --
23 a five-minute video that has some value into it. It kind
24 of shows you what is the CBP approach in trying to, you
25 know, answer some of these challenges. What is our
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1 strategy in trying to deal with the challenges that we're
2 seeing at our ports of entry? And I'll show that quick
3 video in a little bit.
4 The -- and one of the strategies is looking
5 for alternative funding sources. And so I will also talk
6 about the Donations Acceptance Program.
7 With that I think it'd probably be a good
8 time for me to -- I can show you the video. If we can put
9 the video up there and then I'll continue and talk about
10 more -- more of the challenges that we're actually seeing,
11 you know, at a local level.
12 (Video played.)
13 "More than one million people and 65,000
14 truck, rail and maritime cargo containers arrive at U.S.
15 ports of entry by land, sea and air every day. And every
16 year $2.1 trillion worth of goods come through our ports
17 of entry. Our ports are the gateway to our nation
18 welcoming travelers and facilitating the flow of goods
19 that are essential to our economy and American jobs. It
20 is CBP's job to ensure that these travelers and cargo
21 shipments pose no threat to our nation.
22 "Federal expression finding a needle in a
23 haystack absolutely applies to what we do. We know the
24 vast majority of people and products that arrive at our
25 ports of entry are safe and lawfully admissible. Our job
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1 is to stop those few that do pose a threat while
2 facilitating a legitimate trade and travel that fuel our
3 economy.
4 "This is our mission. And our mission
5 continues to grow in response to evolving threats,
6 increase travel in trade and new and expanded facilities.
7 Despite the increased volume and mission requirements, CBP
8 cannot be a choke point slowing the international commerce
9 that is so critical to our economic security and growth.
10 So in these challenging economic times, we have become our
11 own toughest critic by constantly asking ourselves, 'How
12 can we do our job better and more efficiently?' The
13 answer, by transforming nearly every aspect of how we do
14 business. But CBP cannot do this alone. We need support
15 from Congress to enact legislative changes. We rely on
16 partnerships with private sector stakeholders and we rely
17 on the ability of the traveling public to embrace emerging
18 technologies that protect our borders. Our approach to
19 resource optimization has three key components.
20 "First, we are continuously working to
21 optimize the use of our resources through innovation, what
22 we call our business transformation initiatives. We're
23 using new technologies and processes to get the job done
24 faster, more efficiently and more effectively through
25 paperless, mobile and advanced technologies. To help
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1 speed the flow of lawful travelers, we automated
2 admissibility documents, incorporated radio frequency
3 identification technology on our land borders and
4 developed computer software that monitors and tracks
5 changes to airline schedules and associated passenger
6 volumes so that CBP officers are better prepared to react.
7 "To help detect and intercept unlawful
8 materials in cargo and conveyances, we've installed
9 state-of-the-scanning equipment and use advanced data
10 analysis to identify people and cargo shipments that may
11 present a risk.
12 "The second component of our approach is our
13 workload staffing model which reflects an in-depth
14 rigorous analysis of our operations and the level of
15 staffing that is required.
16 "The strength of our highly trained
17 professional law enforcement staff translates directly
18 into our ability to ensure and expedite the flow of people
19 and goods to rev the engine of our economy.
20 "Our data-driven workload staffing model
21 considers all business processes required of CBP officers,
22 the workload associated with those processes and the level
23 of effort needed to effectively carry out CBP's mission on
24 a daily basis. We know how many officers it takes to get
25 the job done both today and as a result of projected
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1 future needs. Our workload staffing model which was
2 reviewed and validated by external experts clearly shows
3 that staffing levels need to keep pace with our expanding
4 mission, increased strengths and growing trade and travel.
5 "The third component of our strengths is
6 finding new ways to fund our operations and recover our
7 cost. This effort involves increasing flexibility to
8 engage in innovative public and private partnerships to
9 ensure that we can provide services. For example if an
10 airline wishes to add international flights outside of
11 existing operating hours or if an airport seeks to build a
12 new terminal, CBP would like to be able to work with these
13 partners on a reimbursable basis to respond quickly to
14 requests for enhanced services. CBP relies on the support
15 of Congress and our stakeholders to explore sources of
16 alternative funding.
17 "The success of our mission depends on our
18 resources, technological transformation, staffing and
19 partnerships. The American public must be confident that
20 we have the resources we need to fulfill our mission and
21 to honor the trust the public places in us. Trust that we
22 are constantly innovating to ensure we are smart and
23 efficient with our resources because we are.
24 "Trust that we have accurately calculated
25 the number of officers we need to accomplish our mission
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1 because we have it.
2 "And trust that we can find flexible sources
3 of funding for CBP field operations through partnerships
4 because we must.
5 "The current economic climate is one of
6 fiscal austerity and we are committed to careful financial
7 stewardship. Therefore it is critical that this resource
8 optimization strategy be implemented to ensure our
9 national and economic security. We are looking to our
10 legislators and our external stakeholders in the travel
11 and trade industries to partner with us. Together we can
12 maintain the operations that secure and facilitate
13 international trade and travel and protect and enhance our
14 American way of life."
15 (Video stopped.)
16 MR. MANCHA: Thank you. As you've seen,
17 that is the CBP's resource optimization strategy.
18 So what are some of the real border-crossing
19 challenges that I'm seeing here in the El Paso field
20 office in my AOR? You know, put that in perspective, you
21 know. In FY15 over 14 million POVs were processed at our
22 international bridge crossings. Over seven -- 7.2 million
23 pedestrians came through our bridges. And over 800,000
24 commercial conveyances were processed at our ports of
25 entry. Together with that we also had over 10,000
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1 individual persons encounters at the ports of entry and as
2 well as over 94,000 pounds of seized narcotics. And I've
3 got to put that in context because I think that that
4 ac- -- ultimately plays into the -- in trying to respond
5 to the -- I guess the question is, "Why are wait times
6 what they are?" And in the line of business that I'm at
7 [sic], I've been doing this for almost 25 years now and
8 I've worked at this border all my life. I started my
9 career in Laredo, went over to Hidalgo, port of entry
10 Hidalgo, and I'm born and raised in the El Paso. All my
11 life I lived along the border and I've been in El Paso for
12 a little over five years.
13 A lot of times what I see is El Paso is the
14 second busiest land border in the southern border, if not
15 in the country. And with it you do see high volumes of
16 traffic and CBP does have a responsibility of managing
17 that traffic to the best of its ability. But I've seen in
18 the last three or four years a steady increase of the --
19 the volume, the work volume so commercial trucks coming in
20 and the POVs, the number of people that are crossing our
21 borders. With that you have the issue of border wait
22 times. And how do we do a better job in managing those
23 border wait times? And so we've -- we turn to -- one of
24 the strategies is is the transportation initiatives. But
25 what does -- what does that mean? It's trying to work
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1 smarter, trying to incorporate technology into our
2 process. And -- and so we look at every opportunity to
3 try to update our systems, you know, whether that --
4 whether that be using RFI technology, whether that means
5 putting key -- kiosks at our pedestrian lanes so that
6 we're able to read the information on the travel documents
7 faster to reduce seconds from that processing time. And a
8 lot of folks, when we look at -- you know, we compare
9 the -- if you're able to save three to eight seconds per
10 person and you multiply that by the number of people that
11 are crossing, that is significant. You know, we average
12 anywhere from 16- to 18,000 pedestrians and that's where
13 we have the -- the kiosk in our pedestrian environment.
14 Again if we add that factor in the second safe per -- per
15 pedestrian, that is significant savings in wait times when
16 we process pedestrians.
17 We also have technology at our vehicle
18 primary lanes. We've got new software technology, we're
19 trying -- we do have qualified readers. In front of the
20 primary stations where the officers can actually get that
21 information, their information is prepopulated in their --
22 in their computer systems so when that individual arrives
23 in primary, the officer doesn't have to spend those
24 seconds trying to process those individuals.
25 Some of the challenges that we do have
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1 individuals that use those lanes and we call those ready
2 lanes and that causes delays. We have to actually go
3 there and manually input that information into the system.
4 You know, when people are trying to get into the correct
5 lanes, you know, right now there's not really nothing
6 [sic] I can do enforcementwise in trying to encourage
7 people to -- to align themselves in the right lanes.
8 And so what other -- other things is CBP
9 doing in trying to address wait times?
10 We talked about lane segregation, you know,
11 from general lanes to ready lanes, the use of our trusted
12 traveler programs, both in the passenger vehicle
13 environment as well the commercial, the truck to trail --
14 trailer program CT PAC, fast lanes, century. Those are
15 all proven programs that also show significant
16 efficiencies in crossing our borders.
17 And then I can't leave out the use of the
18 public partnership. We use the public partnership to also
19 enhance the number of lanes that we open.
20 What we did two, three years ago, I -- was
21 still -- I was still a port director for El Paso -- we
22 implemented an initiative that I refer to as the all lanes
23 initiative. And what it is is that we looked at, you
24 know, for how long can we sustain opening up every single
25 lane that we have within the passenger environment? We
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1 figured that if you get ahead of the -- the queue, you're
2 able to better manage those wait times. So we did a pilot
3 and we've been doing it for over three years now where we
4 open every lane at 6:00 in the morning and we go to 10:00.
5 From 6:00 to 10:00, every lane that is out there for
6 passenger vehicles is open in trying to get ahead of the
7 traffic. We had noticed that traffic would build up by
8 8:00, nine o'clock in the morning, you already had wait
9 times starting to build up on us. So if we have maximum
10 number of lanes open, you get ahead of it, you're bet- --
11 better able to manage those wait times. So now we're able
12 to enhance that initiative by incorporating, you know, the
13 560, the public partner -- partnership program so that now
14 we actually have additional lanes from 10:00 a.m. to
15 whether it be 12:00, 2:00 in trying to manage that -- that
16 traffic. So there's huge success in reducing wait times.
17 Is -- is there still wait time issues at the ports of
18 entry? Absolutely. And the thing is, again, it's a
19 matter of trying to manage them to the best of our
20 abilities.
21 So I'm going to kind of move over to the --
22 the Donations Acceptance Program. And when we talk about
23 the Donations Accept- -- Acceptance Program, you've got
24 to, you know, talk about, you know, two things. You talk
25 about the reimbursable service agreements as well the
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1 Donation Acceptance Program. Back in 2013 when CBP was
2 trying to figure out looking for alternate funding
3 sources, CBP had been approached by different individuals,
4 different entities how -- how could they assist -- assist
5 CBP with -- with providing additional services, with
6 infrastructure improvements. CBP did not have a mechanism
7 for doing it so as the discussion evolved, we were able to
8 get Congress to approve and give CBP the authority to get
9 into these agreements.
10 2014 we actually started the 560 at the port
11 of El Paso. Port of El Paso was one of five ports that
12 was initially selected as part of the pilot. That went on
13 for a year. They made enhancements to the law. They
14 actually expanded the authorities to include now the
15 Donations Acceptance Program.
16 Now we're able to even accept more than just
17 reimbursement for the sources that CBP officers are
18 performing. The CBP commissioner, in conjunction with the
19 GSA administrator collaboration, can now enter into
20 agreements where they've been able to accept donations
21 of -- of real -- real property, they're able to accept
22 donations in improvements to current facilities so it has
23 been a -- a viable mechanism for us to see improvements at
24 our ports of entry.
25 Both -- both the -- with the new -- the
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1 enhanced law that came out in 2014, both provisions now
2 really address CBP's efforts for finding an innovative
3 approach to meeting our growing demand for new and
4 expanded facilities, in particular the ongoing
5 conversation of needs the CPB land port of entry
6 portfolios. CPC is -- again the Donation Acceptance
7 Program is a -- is a good investment in CPB and not only
8 in helping improve our infrastructure to meet our current
9 demands but also help us expedite U.S. trade coming
10 through our ports of entry.
11 In closing, legitimate trade travel plays a
12 critical role in the nation's economic growth and CBP does
13 recognize its role in sustaining such growth. The
14 combination of our highly trained CBP personnel, the use
15 of new technology and modernize our facilities form the
16 essential foundation for CBP to have a strategy moving
17 forward, a strategy that we have to have at each port and
18 being able to continue to grow our -- our economy.
19 I'm going back through my -- the notes that
20 I took earlier on some of these challenges that were --
21 that were brought up.
22 Certified CBP PAC participants. We are
23 moving in trying to encourage more and more the supply
24 chain which is to be CT PAC certified, getting more fast
25 [sic] drivers signed up to the program. We talked about
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1 no dedicated fast lanes. There is actually a dedicated
2 fast lane, you know, but the barrier that separates the
3 fast lane, it sometimes gets moved. We do see nonfast
4 participants, you know, cutting in line and then they get
5 off the line so we are working at trying to make that a
6 permanent fix so we do have dedicated, you know, fast
7 lanes.
8 No dedicated outbound fast lanes. Well, I
9 think that we do have infrastructure constraints there.
10 The outbound is problematic. You know, we see the lines
11 backed up. We heard about trucks sitting idle in
12 neighborhoods. And so when I heard that, I said, "Well, I
13 guess I'm not the only one that gets the complaints,"
14 because we do get complaints that people -- the trucks are
15 lined up in the neighborhoods and so we do see that as an
16 issue. I think that as I saw all the -- all the plans for
17 the roadways, that will help, you know, alleviate some of
18 these issues that we're seeing with the complaints are
19 coming out -- coming from the neighborhoods.
20 In closing I'd just like to say first of
21 all, thank Mr. Secretary and the committee for allowing me
22 to come up to here and present, you know, the POE
23 perspective, but I do see the -- the issues that we talk
24 about international trade today is of having CBP right in
25 the center of it because all the international trade has
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1 to come through a port -- has to come through a port of
2 entry and a lot of the issues that we have -- some of
3 these challenges, we kind of see these as opportunities,
4 you know. I know that, you know, most folks relate to CBP
5 in terms of just wait times. There are a lot more that's
6 going on than just wait times. You know, I didn't get
7 into a lot of the enforcement issues, I don't think that
8 perhaps it'd probably be the right venue for me to
9 elaborate on all the enforcement. But I do need to kind
10 of just kind of share that, you know, what -- what's
11 coming at our ports of entry besides, you know, cars and
12 people and cargo.
13 There are a lot of folks that are claiming,
14 you know, asylum which is a new phenomena that we haven't
15 seen too many of these folks coming in through our ports
16 of entry, you know. And so that causes me to, you know,
17 move resources in trying to address this new workload.
18 You know, I gave you an example today, 200 criminal fear
19 cases, people coming in from -- from Guatemala, Honduras,
20 El Salvador claiming criminal fear. And what does that do
21 to my resources? You know, we've got to make sure that
22 we're -- we attend these folks. There's a human -- civil
23 rights human element in how we're processing these folks.
24 I just can't put these folks on hold and -- and keep
25 running business as usual. You know, we've got the
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1 unaccompanied children. You know, I've had up to, you
2 know, 50, 60 at a time. These are children that they're
3 minors that need to be attended to, you've got to feed
4 them, you've got to make sure they go out and do their --
5 their exercise. That is usually not work that a CBP
6 officer is really entrusted to do, but it's our
7 responsibility, we got to do the right thing to take care
8 of these -- these folks, you know. When we've got to
9 transport these folks either to -- to the bus station, to
10 the airport, they got to ERO. That's personnel that I
11 move to take care of these other functions. That plays
12 into not being able to open all my lanes. And a lot of --
13 a lot of these things that are occurring at the port entry
14 are things that are perhaps not considered when I -- when
15 I have five narcotic seizures happening at one time, you
16 know, and that -- that takes -- obviously, you got to take
17 care of processing the seizures, securing the narcotics,
18 doing the processing of the smuggler, all that plays into
19 it. And so I know that most folks don't want to -- don't
20 want to hear that, they're -- they're just interested
21 about how much does it take to cross the bridge? And so
22 I'm aware of it. I do not, you know, shy away from my
23 responsibility of trying to reduce that wait times. I'm
24 on the wait times 24/7. You know, we try to plan as much
25 ahead as we can, but the unpredictability of when am I
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1 going to get a rush of traffic, when are these criminal
2 fear cases going to hit? I had 25 just show up this
3 morning, 25 criminal fear cases, unexpected. You know, I
4 already have 150 pending. And so the unpredictability is
5 the -- is the -- the unknown there. So how do we prepare
6 to have enough staffing when -- when all these
7 unpredictable factors, you know, are hitting? Whether
8 it's, you know, increase in traffic.
9 We do look at, you know, special events.
10 When there's a concert, if there's a holiday, it's a --
11 and so we try to factor that we need more staff for those
12 days and trying to have adequate staffing at each port of
13 entry, you know.
14 So again I feel that, you know, staffing
15 could be improved. I -- we manage the staffing resource
16 that we have the ports as best we can and I utilize the
17 staff at the other ports. When I'm saturated with folks
18 that we have to process at our ports of entry, we utilize
19 all the ports of entry within my AOR in trying to, you
20 know, keep moving these folks.
21 MR. CASCOS: Sorry. Go ahead.
22 MR. MANCHA: I kind of -- I give you the --
23 the operational perspective of what we see at the ports of
24 entry. At this point I'll open up to see if there's
25 anybody has questions.
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1 MR. CASCOS: Mr. Mancha, first of all let me
2 thank you for your presentation and let me thank you for
3 your public service. I don't think anyone in this room
4 fails to recognize the value of the CBP and the -- and the
5 challenges that you have. And I want to continue working
6 with you and we all want to continue working with you and
7 hopefully talking to some of the leadership in -- in
8 Washington about providing additional man and woman power
9 for additional services for you. We don't expect CBP to
10 be able to predict things and unaccompanied minors, I mean
11 those are things that have been occurring for last three
12 or four years and so maybe you can project out that.
13 But -- but I think, you know, we are here to help you
14 and -- and we -- and so I didn't want anybody really
15 jumping on the wait line thing because it is frustrating.
16 When -- when I used to be an elected the official, I'm
17 sure the mayor and the county judge have received phone
18 calls from people complaining about the wait times, you
19 know, especially, you know, southbound and northbound.
20 But -- but it's something that we all have to work with.
21 And I just want to thank you for coming and sharing that
22 information with us. But again we -- we want to continue
23 that dialogue with you. If you need any help from -- from
24 this group or our office or the county judge or the
25 mayor's office, please reach out and let us know what it
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1 is that we and everyone in this room or anyone in this
2 room can do to assist you in doing -- you know, there --
3 your port is no different from the other ports of entry
4 along -- along the border. The drumbeat is the same. You
5 know, the lack of manpower, you know, unexpectability
6 [sic]. Things happen and then consequently, well, we
7 don't -- we never hear that. We read about it in the
8 newspaper a couple days later, but -- but all we hear
9 about is the delays in the wait time and -- and what --
10 what we're empowered to do or engaged to do is try to make
11 sure that our goods and services are moving as rapidly
12 across our ports of entry as possible. But don't --
13 don't -- don't believe for one minute that we don't
14 appreciate all the work that you guys do. I know it's a
15 tough job.
16 I was at the Canadian port of entry not too
17 long ago, right in the Erie, New York, and it was -- it
18 was interesting. They have the same challenges that --
19 that you have, but ours are a lot worse, you know. We
20 have a lot more traffic coming through our ports of entry
21 than along the Canadian border. But I just want to thank
22 you from myself and this group, you know, for your -- you
23 know, for your hard work.
24 Let me open that up to any kind of questions
25 or commentary, we've got a few minutes.
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1 Mayor.
2 MR. LEESER: You know, one thing. First of
3 all, Mr. Mancha, thank you because you've been a great
4 friend to the community and you work great with the city.
5 When we started the 5- -- 560 program, which is the P3, we
6 actually -- it was more of a learn- -- learning process.
7 Where was the line where we're going gauge the wait time,
8 where are we going to get additional officers, how are we
9 going to do it? You've done a great job of working with
10 us. We actually started meeting every Thursday trying to
11 figure that out and actually we're there now. I think
12 we've actually identified it. And the city is actually
13 tax- -- taxpayer's money, we're actually putting in about
14 $2.2 million every year that help in quality of life bonds
15 starting with bringing goods across the border which is
16 really important but also the quality of life as you -- we
17 used to go out there and look at people waiting in line,
18 walking across the border and having those long wait
19 times. It really meant the quality of life and, you know,
20 when you get, you know 105, 110 degrees so it was really
21 tough. So you've done a great job of expediting that.
22 And one of the things that people need to realize if we
23 had not done the P3 program, if you've not done a great
24 job really working with the city to be able to do that,
25 where would the wait be today? Because we've actually had
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1 a lot of increase of -- whether it's freight traffic,
2 pedestrian traffic, vehicular traffic, we've had a huge
3 increase, but yet based on the work that we've been able
4 to do together, we've actually decreased the wait time by
5 quite a bit. So where would it be today and where it is
6 today is such a big difference based the P3 program which
7 is a pilot program that's a five-year program that I think
8 the Congress and the federal government will increase it,
9 do it on a open basis to all ports because it's been very
10 successful.
11 So thank you for -- for your hard work. And
12 I remember the every Thursday meetings we -- we had with
13 our office and your office and trying to determine where
14 we were going to actually engage it. I mean we kept
15 right -- putting a line on the ground. Okay. We'll start
16 from here. No, that's not a good spot, we'll do it from
17 here. But we've actually with Metropia and a lot of other
18 things, we've actually been able to gauge and make a big
19 difference. So it's the P3 program has been a huge
20 success to our community and we'll continue to invest in
21 our partnership.
22 Thank you.
23 MR. MANCHA: Thank you, Mayor, and thank you
24 to your staff for the great partnership that we have, you
25 know. And also have great partnership with the -- the
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1 trade committee with the stakeholders so if we talk about
2 the collaboration that occurs, you know, we wouldn't be
3 able to do our job without the -- the partnership that
4 exists, whether it be with the stakeholders, the state and
5 federal partnership that -- that helps CBP, you know,
6 accomplish its mission day in and day out. So I thank --
7 thank everybody for that.
8 MR. CASCOS: Mayor?
9 MR. SAENZ: Yes, thank you very much. Do
10 you have any type of preinspection of CBP officers in
11 Mexico: Livestock, rail, airport?
12 MR. MANCHA: Not -- not just yet. We do
13 have Foxconn coming online probably by the end of this
14 year, if not the early 2017. So we will have alternative
15 station in Mexico right across the Santa Teresa port of
16 entry.
17 MR. SAENZ: Okay. Thank you.
18 MR. CASCOS: Anything else?
19 MR. DRUSINA: I would just like to again
20 thank you for the service that you provide over the 1,954
21 mile border that we have offices along. We depend on CBP
22 to protect a lot of our personnel that out doing water
23 measurements or border line surveys and we got a great
24 relationship. We couldn't do our job without the
25 excellent help and support that you a provide us. And
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1 just kudos, thank you for what you do.
2 MR. MANCHA: Thank you, Commissioner.
3 MR. CASCOS: Anything else?
4 Gerry?
5 MR. SCHWEBEL: Secretary, I'm going to take
6 a little bit different perspective, you know,
7 understanding clearly with all due respect to all of our
8 friends at CBP, I would like to see us write -- make a
9 recommendation that every one of the Texas port of entries
10 [sic] require or, you know, have these meetings such as
11 the mayor's talking about -- you know, Mayor Leeser's
12 talking about because it all boils down to the local
13 initiative and the local dialogue of the port of entry.
14 Some of the more successful points of entry
15 are those that have ongoing meetings between the
16 stakeholders and -- and the -- both the public local
17 officials. But it is not -- you know, it's been years
18 maybe sometimes some do it better than others that we
19 don't -- the CBP has not -- you know, has not sought to
20 have it as part of their ongoing, you know, requirement to
21 actually have those either quarterly meetings or monthly
22 meetings and I think those are critical. You know, you
23 take -- you take the state of Texas, it's got four Customs
24 districts that generate billions of dollars. Yet, you
25 know, by not having let's say a president of the chamber,
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1 a president of the economic development, a president of
2 the transportation, local transportation association
3 sitting with the mayors and sitting with the county judges
4 in ongoing meetings with CBP, I don't see how you can run
5 any organization successful. So I've -- that's something
6 I promoted for 30 years, you know, those that know me,
7 because I believe that's the only way it's going to work
8 to be successful. Those points of entry that are met --
9 that are successful. The El Paso stories or some of the
10 other stories are good because it starts off with the DFO
11 or starts off with a board of director having the
12 willingness. But I think it has to come from the top, you
13 know, not from necessarily -- you know, we -- we're
14 fortunate at the local level, they take their own
15 initiative like you do here and like we've done in the
16 past. It seems like -- like Laredo. But Laredo I've seen
17 it where it's -- where it's happening and I've seen it
18 when it's not happening. I like it better when it's
19 happening, the meetings are ongoing and a dialogue exists
20 with all the stakeholders, not just the local government
21 stakeholders. With all due respect to all law enforcement
22 officials which I have the highest respect for, but I
23 think that dialogue needs to be part of a structured
24 ongoing recommendation from this committee in order to be
25 effective.
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1 MR. CASCOS: We've -- and Caroline has kind
2 of made those notes but put it in writing, send it to us
3 through an e-mail that way we have exactly the verbiage
4 that you want. I think it's a good idea. I will tell you
5 every time we had a new port director in the Brownsville
6 port, we always visited and got together. And you're
7 right, you got to establish that line of communication.
8 Thank you, Gerry.
9 Anybody else?
10 All right. Looks like we're going to
11 finish -- well, not done yet. Thank you, sir. Appreciate
12 you coming by. Thank you.
13 We are running a good 15 minutes ahead of
14 schedule which is great. I think I'm not going to miss my
15 flight. The -- now the open discussion on future
16 meetings. I will tell you that the next -- the next
17 meeting is scheduled for December the 7th in Brownsville,
18 Texas. We're trying to figure out the logistics in terms
19 of if we can do a tour of the west rail, maybe some other
20 things along that area. December 7th and then we will let
21 you know the -- the logistics of it, hotels, et cetera,
22 when we get closer to that day.
23 Now, if anybody have any specifics topics
24 they want to talk about, e-mail it to us as soon as you
25 can. We're going to work our end of, you know, to
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1 bring -- to bring a good program, but if anybody has any
2 ideas of what you'd like to hear in Brownsville, please,
3 please let us know as soon you can. Okay?
4 Okay. Judge, you want to read that?
5 MS. ESCOBAR: Oh, I don't know if I can.
6 MR. CASCOS: You're the teacher.
7 MS. ESCOBAR: Right, with very bad vision.
8 Let's see. Develop and implement -- I feel like I'm at an
9 eye exam. X-Y-4-3 --
10 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Try the other line.
11 MS. ESCOBAR: Right. One line up.
12 Develop and implement economic develop
13 strategy and actions relating to the Texas --
14 MR. CASCOS: No, public. Develop --
15 development strategy and public policy.
16 MS. ESCOBAR: -- and public policy
17 relating --
18 MR. CASCOS: That facilitates.
19 MS. ESCOBAR: Oh. That fac- -- oh, I see.
20 -- that facilitates U.S.-Mexico border
21 trade, creates efficient corridors and enhances the state
22 and national economy.
23 Good.
24 MR. CASCOS: Of course since you wrote it,
25 it sounds good. Thank you very much.
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1 MS. ESCOBAR: The question is is everybody
2 okay with -- is everybody else okay with that?
3 MR. CASCOS: Silence is concurrence.
4 All right. Anything else?
5 MS. MAYS: Just want to let you-all know
6 that we had a lot of discussions on the goals and
7 objectives and we're going to be sending that to you-all,
8 you know, prior to the next meeting to use, make sure
9 that, you know -- this kind of what's going to set the
10 tone for when we move forward with drafting the report.
11 And then, as we talked about, please send -- you know, you
12 saw what was presented on the key challenges. Some of
13 them have come up in the last discussions. Please send
14 those to me so we could incorporate that and share with
15 you at the next meeting -- the next meeting's going to be
16 very critical. We're going to have kind of what I call a
17 critical path where we have all of the issues that, you
18 know, we talked about today, goals, mission -- mission
19 vision, goals, objectives, key challenges and really
20 started to move into some of the recommendations that
21 Secretary already mentioned here. E-mail those
22 recommendation thoughts, key challenges to us so we could
23 start mapping all of these because we have to have kind of
24 this framework moving forward that will help fin- -- with
25 the final report. But I think the next meeting is where
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1 we're really going to have all those dots connected that
2 will translate into a final report for BTAC sometimes over
3 the next year.
4 So again just thank you for being here, but
5 keep working while we're not at the meeting, then the
6 meeting -- a lot of the work is done outside of the
7 meeting from our part but also from your part. Thoughts
8 come up, send it to me. Ideas come up, send it to me.
9 Any meetings or things going on, please let me know so I
10 can let the broader group know as well. You know, if you
11 have a meeting whether in the U.S. here along the border
12 or Mexico or, you know, in Washington, D.C., share that
13 information. Or if you even see article, information that
14 might benefit this group, please share it with me so I can
15 share it with the rest of the committee. I think that's
16 really one of the reasons that our committee was very
17 successful was the members participated not just by
18 showing up at the meetings but by feeding the information
19 to me that I fed out to the rest of the committee and it
20 also provided input to the -- to the final documents and
21 are deliverable. So I just wanted to stress that -- that
22 to this committee.
23 MR. CASCOS: Caroline has spoken, yes,
24 ma'am.
25 MR. LEESER: I just want to thank you for
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1 being here and bringing the meeting to El Paso and
2 everyone being here on behalf of the city and the county.
3 When I say the city, it's city and county because we are
4 one. We're grateful that you brought the agenda and the
5 meeting to El Paso and that you'll be here in a couple of
6 weeks again for your fit times since I've been in office
7 so I appreciate that and everyone for making your --
8 El Paso your home for last night and today.
9 Thank you again. We really -- really are
10 grateful for that.
11 MR. CASCOS: Thank you, Mayor.
12 Oh, yeah, I do have, but you didn't give me
13 a time. Are you ready?
14 I want to thank everybody for -- for
15 attending. I thought it was a very good meeting. I do
16 want to thank UTEP for -- for offering their facility to
17 us. Thanking their leadership.
18 Is there anything else for the BTAC?
19 If not, do I hear a motion to adjourn?
20 MR. LOVE: So moved.
21 MR. CASCOS: Moved by Mr. Love.
22 Do I have a second?
23 MR. LEESER: Second.
24 MR. CASCOS: Second by Mayor Leeser.
25 Any further discussion?
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1 All those in favor signify by saying "aye."
2 Any opposed can stay.
3 We are adjourned.
4 (The proceedings concluded.)
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