Local News
| News | Sports | Business | Weather | Opinions | Archives | E-mail Us |

Sunday, Mar. 14, 1999

Two votes may undo city, county bonds, observers say

Separate issues that would raise taxes to fund projects seen as hurting each other

By JENNIFER STUMP
Staff Writer

   One year, two potential bond elections.
   Corpus Christi area voters -- who have approved five school bond elections recently -- could face multimillion dollar proposals from the city and county within a year.
   Nueces County commissioners likely will set a date for a $38.5 million bond election at their meeting Wednesday.
   And Corpus Christi officials have said that after the April 3 city elections, they may consider a general bond election to help pay for seawall repairs and other projects.
   However, a local political science professor warned that having two major bond elections within months of each other could endanger the chances of either being approved.
   "I think it's real problematic that these are all coming out at the same time," said Bob Bezdek, a professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
   If approved, the $38.5 million bond election would enable the county to get $51.5 million in state and federal money to elevate the JFK Causeway, dredge a boat channel through Padre Island and build a county fairground in Robstown. It would also divert highway money to help widen Farm to Market Road 624 in Calallen.
   Some Nueces County officials have said they are concerned that a city bond election could derail their own plans. And city officials, who have voiced support for the county's proposal, say they have a backlog of work to do before they are ready to move forward with their own bond proposal.
   "I hope that (city officials) realize that the public only has so much money available," County Judge Richard Borchard said.
   

Talking with the mayor

   Borchard said he has had conversations with Mayor Loyd Neal about the county's bond election, which includes two projects inside the city limits -- Packery Channel and the JFK Causeway.
   "I need to sit down with the mayor on a one-to-one basis. The city and the county need to coordinate this issue," Borchard said.
   Neal said the city will have to hold its own bond election sometime soon. The City Council needs to consider street repairs, street lighting and parks, besides the seawall, he said.
   "We are going to have to have a complete accounting of our current capital improvements projects before we consider anything else," Neal said. "I had hoped we could do it in the fall, but I don't know if we'll be ready by then. We may have to wait to do it next spring."
   Engineers who spent 10 months studying the city's 60-year-old seawall said it will cost $36 million to strengthen the structure enough to withstand a major hurricane's storm surge.
   

Past bond approval

   Corpus Christi voters have been willing to approve some bond elections in the past four years. All of those were for education, however.
   The largest, a $66.9 million plan from the Corpus Christi Independent School District, was approved in 1995 to build two elementary schools, upgrade classrooms and renovate facilities around the city.
   Most recently, voters in the Tuloso-Midway school district in December approved a $20 million bond issue to build two new schools.
   In 1997, bond issues also passed in Calallen, Flour Bluff and West Oso school districts.
   But also in 1997, voters crushed a sales tax that would have funded $105 million in projects. Supporters of the Community Progress Partnership said the proposal would have helped chart Corpus Christi's future by benefiting 35 community projects, including library improvements and an expansion of the convention center.
   The measure failed: 69 percent of voters opposed it.
   Del Mar College officials have said they also may need to hold a bond election to pay for upgrades to facilities but won't be ready within the next year.
   

County plan deemed strongest

   Claudia Jackson, a spokeswoman for Del Mar College, said the school doesn't yet have a timeline, list of projects or dollar amount for a bond election.
   "I know better than to predict what the board will decide, though," she said. "We've kind of talked about it in nebulous terms. But it has been talked about often."
   Of all the bond possibilities, the county's proposed bond election stands the best chance of passing, Bezdek said.
   "The first one is going to have the best shot because of the projects. It's a clever plan," he said. "If that one doesn't go, I don't think the other ones are going to go. I think the county is going to be a pacesetter, a weather vane."
   The April 3 city elections -- and how many incumbents stay in office -- also will indicate whether the Corpus Christi officials can pass a bond election now, Bezdek said.
   "I think we're going to be reading in the tea leaves of this city election," he said.
   

Council problems

   The City Council has recently been faced with revelations that city staff kept them in the dark about delays in street projects, an FBI investigation into lobbying before a vote on a health insurance contract and discussion about work approved in a 1986 bond election that's still not finished.
   City officials have said they will pay for $26 million in repairs to a bulge in Wesley Seale Dam this year by selling bonds -- but it won't be a property tax issue that voters will decide.
   That debt will be paid for with utility revenues, increasing the average household's water bill about 48 cents a month, city officials said.
   County Commissioner Joe McComb said it's taken years of planning to bring the county's bond proposal forward.
   "I think a lot of this has to do with timing," he said. "To bring state and federal and county money together, I think you have a very rare opportunity."
   The city isn't at the same level, he said.
   "The wise course for them would be to spend the next year to 18 months setting priorities and deciding what projects to do," McComb said. "They would have a difficult time passing a bond election. . . . We're ready to move."
   

What residents think

   A phone poll by an Austin research company has been asking Nueces County residents what they think about the county's plan and some of the key players -- people like Borchard, McComb and environmentalist Pat Suter, who has fought the Packery Channel idea for two decades.
   John Michael, project engineer at Naismith Engineering, said his company commissioned the poll to gauge public support. The firm recently completed a three-year feasibility study for dredging Packery Channel and building a county fairgrounds.
   Borchard said about 58 percent of the people polled so far have been in favor of the county's bond election.
   Michael said the random poll of 400 county residents will continue for at least another week.
   The margin of victory or defeat in a county bond election could reflect on the city and other agencies later, Bezdek said.
   "If that one doesn't pass, I sure wouldn't want to try another one," he added.
   Staff writer Jennifer Stump can be reached at 886-3778 or by e-mail at stumpj@caller.com
   

Post your comments on this story in our forums.

---

  © 1999 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.