Battle Of Corpus Christi Continues Unabated

For years there has been conflict over the scope and pace of development in Corpus Christi. The successive councils and mayors have largely been supportive of giving developers a free hand with large, extravagant plans on Padre Island and the city bay front. Those who opposed these plans have long been labeled as “aginners” and have been covered with scorn and ridicule from the pro-development faction. In ’05 the aginners scored a major win when a referendum against closing a large section of the beach on Padre Island as a gift to a developer who wanted to build a large resort, complete with its own effectively “private” beach. But the battle continues on today and the next fight is looming over an open stretch of bay front property mightily coveted by the developers and their allies. Throughout these battles opponents of the excessive development have cried “fix streets and infrastructure first.” Of course, they were ignored. Now the streets have deteriorated to the point of embarrassment, doing physical damage to vehicles and to being a real detriment to growth within the city. Millions of dollars’ worth of tax abatements and outright giveaways have gone to some of these developments and most of the public is sick of it. There is now a budget crunch in the city government and in order to fix the streets the mayor and certain members of the council have proposed a “street users” fee which is to be attached each month to the public utilities bill of all residencies and businesses of the city. This is an outrageous abrogation of the duties and responsibilities the city council is supposed to fulfill. Public reaction to this is so strong that a recently proposed extravagant development is now possibly in jeopardy. The council doesn’t dare raise taxes to pay for this so a $69 million dollar bond election has been proposed to fund a plan called “Destination Bay Front” which would be built on the now open land once occupied by the Corpus Christi Memorial Coliseum. The pro-development faction is nervous that such an election may go against them. It will be interesting to see how this all turns out. Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone they paved paradise put up a parking lot …Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi