McALLEN — Victor Maldonado recalled on yesterday a man who came to the Ozanam Center with no place else to go.

The executive director of the homeless shelter in Brownsville was reminded of the client moments after receiving a donation from one of the participating donors of AIM Charities’ 2015-16 campaign.

“An individual who at one point was very well off, and because he went through a divorce and lost his job, ended up at the shelter,” Maldonado said at the event. “We worked with him, did case management with him and even hired that individual as a security guard for the shelter.”

Two years later, Maldonado said the client, who could not be identified, returned to the job he previously lost.

“Now he’s back making good money,” Maldonado added. “He left our agency and is doing well out in the community, because he got that second chance.”

Second chances are what Maldonado said AIM Charities’ annual fundraising campaign provides.

The second annual effort raised more than $80,000 for the 21 beneficiary agencies — local nonprofit organizations that will benefit from the effort — to help those in need, such as the once-hapless individual Maldonado said Ozanam assisted.

After two years, AIM Charities has raised more than $190,000 thanks to the generosity of as many as 14 donors.

Contributors include Plains Capital Bank, Vantage Bank, Edwards Abstract Title Co., Charles Clark Chevrolet, Clark Knapp Honda, IBC Brownsville and IBC McAllen, Doctors Hospital at Renaissance and AIM Media Texas, which covered the administrative costs to ensure that 100 percent of the donations went to the nonprofits.

Also donating were Lone Star National Bank, Valley Baptist Health Systems, Wells Fargo, the South Texas College administrative staff and Nancy and Jeremy L. Halbreich, chairman and CEO of AIM Media Texas.

Present for the check presentation at the McAllen Chamber of Commerce on Thursday were representatives of the donating institutions and the beneficiary agencies.

Among them was Eloise Montemayor, grants administrator and public relations coordinator for the Salvation Army in McAllen, who expressed gratitude on behalf of her organization.

“They really do help us continue feeding the hungry and shelter the homeless,” Montemayor said. “Our mission really does go hand-in-hand with AIM’s mission, and that is to help the hungry and the homeless. So we’re able to continue providing the basic needs to people who are in need.”

Stephan Wingert, publisher of The Monitor and regional vice president for AIM Media Texas, shared similar sentiments at the presentation.

AIM Media Texas is the owner of The Monitor, the Valley Morning Star, the Brownsville Herald and the Mid-Valley Town Crier — all of which ran the campaign in December and January featuring the charitable organizations and soliciting donations on their behalf.

“The process at AIM Charities is simple,” Wingert said. “We ask for contributions — 100 percent of which goes towards helping those in need.”

Such funds, Montemayor said, go a long way.

“Any extra income we can get is a tremendous help,” she added. “With just $2 we can feed a meal to someone, so whatever we can get we can help hundreds of thousands of people with meals.”

Additional perspective came from Bill Reagan, executive director of Loaves & Fishes in Harlingen, who explained that efforts to shelter and feed the homeless amount to approximately $2,500 per day.

“That’s about $100 an hour, which can also buy about 75 meals,” Reagan said. “The shelter also costs about $600 a night to operate, and I think the best part of this particular (donation) from AIM Charities is that there’s flexibility to use it all across our organization. We serve meals every day and shelter people overnight. Those needs never go away. We’re able to plug in the AIM Charities monies to make sure that works every day.”

For American Military Support, monetary contributions go toward quality of life packages sent to members of the U.S. military from the Rio Grande Valley who are stationed overseas.

AMS President Rodolfo “Rudy“ Garcia specified that the funds will help pay for 31 packages that will soon be sent to troops in Afghanistan, as well as future shipments.

Garcia said AMS does this at least four times a year since the expenses associated with the effort exceed $600 per shipment.

“We pay $19.45 per box, which makes it very expensive for us to send out packages,” Garcia added, further noting that packages include food, personal hygiene products, some clothing, travel pillows, blankets and writing materials.

At the Aurora House, donations help pay the salaries of a small staff of dedicated employees, who executive director Kathy Scheuerman said sacrifices much to care for the terminally ill.

According to Scheuerman, the highest paid at the Weslaco home makes about $700 to $800 a week. Still, salaries make up 75 percent of the operation’s total annual costs.

“Caregivers will tell you, ‘I love working here and want to keep working here,’” Scheuerman said, adding that a steady flow of donations help maintain operations for years to come.

Wingert also praised the agencies for using the donations to “directly affect the lives of those you serve.”

Maldonado can attest to as much.

“Nowadays grants are hard to come by,” Maldonado said. “We’re able to purchase items such as towels, personal hygiene kits and products that are very much needed — simple things like socks or underwear. We see a lot of families that are in that type of need who just need a little bit of assistance to get back on track.”

HARLINGEN — The city will begin working with the Brownsville Community Development Corporation to build homes for low-income residents.

The Harlingen Community Development Department will work with the Brownsville nonprofit agency, which will replace the Harlingen Community Development Corporation.

The HCDD found the HCDC in noncompliance last year, citing lack of documentation and inaccurate and misspelled documentation.

The HCDC did not respond to a message requesting comment.

As part of its partnership with the HCDD, the BCDC will receive $442,000 in federal funds to build low-income housing in Harlingen, Tammy DeGannes-Jackson, the HCDD’s director, said yesterday.

“It’s a wonderful partnership,” she said.

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HARLINGEN — You might say the marquee at Harlingen High School serves as its spokesman.

It has so many responsibilities.

“Congratulations,” it reads when students return victorious from a competition.

“Good luck” it might say to a team leaving for an event.

The marquee, however, is from another era, and posting messages with letters that may fall off is a laborious and now unnecessary task.

Members of the Harlingen High School Class of 1965 met with school district officials to announce its decision to donate $6,000 toward the purchase of a new electronic marquee.

The school district still will have to acquire several thousand dollars more to pay for the sign.

However, Principal Imelda Munivez said she expected it to be in place by the beginning of the 2016 – 2017 school year.

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HARLINGEN — Former students of Harlingen High School reminisced yesterday about their experiences there so many years ago.

One name kept popping up as members of the Class of ‘65 gathered at their alma mater to announce a donation for a new electronic marquee.

“Mr. Cleckler,” said Omar Cano, 70. “He was tough, and he was very supportive of our student projects, very supportive of our clubs.”

Cano was talking about Glen Cleckler, a U.S. Marine who fought on Iwo Jima during World War II.

After the war he returned home and became an educator and later principal at Harlingen High School.

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EDINBURG — A tuition hike proposed by University of Texas Rio Grande Valley President Guy Bailey last month was approved by UT System regents on Tuesday and will become effective next fall.

UT officials accepted system-wide increases, ranging from 2-4 percent, during a meeting Monday, according to a news release. At UTRGV, the hike was capped at two percent and will mainly affect incoming undergraduate and graduate students because current students have a fixed rate for up to four years.

“Most of our tuition and fees are at or well below the national level and the fact is that tuition and fees are the single greatest driver for revenue, which, if spent wisely, improves the quality of our schools,” UT System Chancellor William McRaven said in the release. “However, we remain sensitive to the financial challenges our students and their families face, and we very carefully consider their perspective when we make these recommendations.”

Incoming undergraduate students will see a two percent increase totaling $74 for the next two years, meaning entering students will pay a total of $3,724 in 2016 and those entering in 2017 will pay $3,798.

The rates for non-resident undergraduate students will also increase by $74 this year, totaling $9,574, and again in 2017, totaling $9,648.

Incoming graduate students will see an increase of 1.7 percent, or $55 in 2016 and $56 in 2017, which will take their tuition to $3,304 this fall and up to $3,360 the following year.

Non-resident graduate rates will also increase by $55 this year and $56 in 2017, taking the rates to $6,814 and $6,870, respectively.

Current students who don’t finish their degree in four years, will also see an increase.

UT System officials had recommended a minimum of a two percent inflationary rate increase across UT institutions, which for the most part had not had any increases since 2012, Bailey said. But UTRGV had increased its rates before it’s inauguration in the fall 2015, when the system also approved a change from credit- or hourly based tuition to a fixed tuition for up to four years for graduate and undergraduate students.

Because of this recent change, Bailey said he was not comfortable increasing tuition by more than the suggested two percent, even after a UTRGV committee recommended a three percent hike.

“Just thinking that we recently set our rates, I thought we would stick with the two percent inflationary rate, and we’ll see down the road if we need more,” Bailey said in February.

UTRGV officials estimate this increase will create more than $518,000 in new revenue this year and more than $1.6 million in 2017, including undergraduate and graduate rates. Bailey said this revenue would be mainly used to increase the number of course offerings at all UTRGV campuses and hire more faculty.

“This is primarily to expand educational access,” he said. “We’ll also use some money to improve graduation rates.”

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HIDALGO — Southbound traffic to Mexico was shortly detained Thursday morning as Hidalgo city officials and more than 100 spectators walked in unison to the middle of the Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge, where they kicked off BorderFest.

City mayors from Hidalgo and Reynosa have been meeting at the same spot for 40 years to exchange hugs as a gesture of goodwill. The traditional abrazo, or hug, marks the start of the festivities.

But even though officials from both cities have been expressing their willingness to work together from across the Rio Grande for decades, the friendship between the two has never been put to paper, Mayor Martin Cepeda said during yesterday’s ceremony.

“This morning we will make history — everybody right here — because this morning we will sign our sister city agreement, which will only make us closer,” Cepeda said after the hug. “It will now be official, where it had never been official before.”

Reynosa Mayor Jose Elias Leal and his wife, Elvira, met Hidalgo’s delegation at the middle of the bridge with their own support group. There the mayors exchanged gifts and bouquets of flowers for their wives.

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Hillary Clinton is the candidate representing the Establishment, the dominant group holding power. The Establishment has created an economy in which one percent of Americans own 50 percent of the wealth. The 1 percent cannot prosper without the other 99 percent because the consumer is 70 percent of the economy, and the economy is rigged to generate wealth for the 1 percent.

So, at the top we have the 1 percent, enabled by the Establishment. In the middle we have the middle class which is shrinking because it is being milked for all it’s worth, and at the bottom we have the working poor, the retired poor, the unemployed, the disabled, the undocumented, etc., most of whom receive some sort of monetary entitlement or tax break from the government.

Everyone is a consumer and the more they consume, the better off the 1 percent becomes because they own and control the means of production. So to keep the money coming in to the 1 percent and the votes coming in for the Establishment, the Treasury deposits hundreds of millions of dollars each month into the accounts of the lower classes. This money is spent quickly because the poor must spend it to live. and much of it flows into the coffers of the 1 percent.

I applaud the humanitarian benefits of these entitlements, but condemn the Establishment and the 1 percent rigging the economy so heavily in favor of themselves.

And where does the government get all this money for entitlements? It’s created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve which is not a true government agency but a greedy banking cartel that was given extraordinary powers by Congress. The Fed is also part of the Establishment and has been since its creation.

The Fed creates money at the stroke of a computer key, lends it to the Treasury by buying bonds, and it’s added to the national debt and billed to the taxpayer. The Fed is the big winner because it gets those bonds for next to nothing, the 1 percent comes in second, the government wins some votes, the poor hang on, and the taxpayer gets shafted.

The hope and change touted by Obama has tremendously benefited the wealthy but hasn’t panned out for the rest of us. It’s time for a regime change.

Jack King Harlingen

To the Editor:

Our Creator built us with the unique ability to communicate, reason and make decisions. Then of course, we have to live with the results. Following are some facts and statistics that you can mull around in your grey matter, sometimes referred to as your brain.

The top 20 folks (individuals) in America own more wealth than the bottom half of folks (that’s all the rest of us).

College tuition increased by 1,120 percent

Medical care has increased by 601 percent

Food has increased by 244 percent

Shelter has gone up by 380 percent

Typical workers pay up 10 percent

Minimum- wage workers pay down 5.5 percent

Average CEOs pay increased by 937 percent

This is what has happened since 1978. this information provided by EPI, Bloomberg, US Labor Department.

And then from The New York Times the inflation-adjusted net worth for a typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, a 36 percent decline.

Now a phrase from the past, “put that in your pipe and smoke it” or as we say today “think about that for awhile.”

That is what I am doing, Have a great day!

Tony Bos Harlingen

HARLINGEN — The school children chanted “tear it down, tear it down” as big yellow machinery blasted through the roof.

With the encouragement of city officials, the children cheered on the destruction of the tiny run-down house.

More than 50 students from Zavala Elementary witnessed the little blue and white house that once used to be a haven for drugs and crime be demolished.

The spectacle only lasted about three minutes, but according to city officials, the impact of tearing down this structure will last a lifetime – and of course be a benefit to the community.

Like previous years, the city has partnered with the Texas National Guard in a joint effort to demolish dilapidated structures which often serve as a haven for criminal activity. These buildings also are an outright eyesore for neighbors and others.

The little blue and white house located at 614 N. C Street looked as though no one had lived in it for years.

Just minutes before the demo, Police Chief Jeffry Adickes said the police department had responded to this particular house a number of times over the years.

The calls differed in nature, from criminal mischief, graffiti, and loud music, Adickes said.

“Today, when we take this house down, its going to be a fresh palette and a fresh piece of paper and a new piece of art that will live in Harlingen from now on,” he said.

In its place will be a new home for a family, courtesy of Habitat for Humanity.

During the past five years, the city has demolished 134 unsafe, crime-ridden structures and worked with dozens of private property owners to demolish more than 94 others and rehabilitate many more.

Known as Operation Crackdown, the Texas National Guard deployed a demolition unit of service men and women to be stationed in Harlingen from now through March 11.

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Harlingen Mayor Chris Boswell said a prayer thi smorning for Maria Cavazos to restore her health and give her comfort.

Her husband of 64 years was the first to arrive to the annual Harlingen Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast Thursday morning at the Harlingen Community Center.

He arrived two hours early with his wife to make sure she could receive the power of prayer from the community of Harlingen.

Boswell also prayed for all who are sick and all who are in need in the community.

Texas Secretary of State Carlos Cascos was the keynote speaker at the fifth annual event.