Today is a special day for all of us here. Because it brings us together to talk about our community.
I see a lot of elected officials in the room that will be recognized later today. All of us public servants have a duty, a responsibility to make things better.
Here in Hidalgo County we have many things to be proud of and according to our numbers I think we are now the seventh most populous county in the State of Texas, out of 254 counties. We have many things to be proud of. We have five international bridges, we have the number one and number two shopping centers for the Simon people. We have six acute care hospitals. We just have so many assets that we can be proud of.
But one of the things that is very concerning to us and was exemplified by a recent study by the federal government is that our county for the last five decades has had a poverty level in excess of 20 percent. The federal government wanted to receive information about all those counties throughout the United States and unfortunately we made that list.
So, who do we look to for support to help us solve that problem? We can’t look to somebody else to solve the problem for us. We have to solve our own problems ourselves. But with the help of others. Because these are problems that governments by themselves cannot solve. It is a problem for the government of us to solve.
So that is why in Hidalgo County we started… we are now calling it the Prosperity Task Force. Very simply, we have two main goals.
One is to create human capital in our people, to qualify, to earn the money that we want them to earn and that they need to get out of poverty. We don’t want a handout. We want to move people from the welfare line to the taxpayer line. In order to do that you have to have skills. In fact, we have been doing that fairly well. But what is the problem we see? We have a negative migration of people that we educate and train that left because the jobs were not here.
So, the other half of the Prosperity Task Force’s goal is to create the jobs. So, what are the companies looking for? As best as we can tell and we have a lot of economic development people here, for sure they are looking for three things. A reliable source of workforce, a reliable source of power, and a reliable source of water.
So, for us to have representatives of the NADBank here is really very exciting to us because we want them to trust us, to believe in us and know that their investment with us is going to help.
But, I don’t want you to leave without hearing this message. Because I look at this crowd here. My last name is Cortez. And according to demographers here in the state of Texas, the majority of Texans are going to be Hispanic. In other words, Texas is going to look like us. We are 92 percent Hispanic. So, if we have that high level of people in poverty and the rest of Texas is going to look like us, that does not look like a good future.
I am a two time cancer survivor. I was lucky to have detected my cancer early and I took care of it early. We cannot wait for the problems we are having in training, in putting our people away from the welfare line to the taxpayer line, to solve the problem. We have got to do it today. Now.
So, it gives me great pleasure to have you here. I would like my dear friend Noe to give a proper introduction. Noe.
Editor's Note: The above commentary was provided by Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez at a luncheon hosted by Estrada Hinojosa & Company, Inc., and held at the McAllen Country Club. The event was organized so that elected officials and stakeholders from Hidalgo and Starr counties could learn more about the work of the North American Development Bank. The keynote speaker was the incoming managing director of NADBank, John Beckham. The "Noe" Judge Cortez referenced as Noe Hinojosa, a co-founder of Estrada Hinojosa & Company.
