Inside the Moon
Bridge Dedication A5
Issue 643
Island Gardening A9
Paddle Practice A7
The
Island Moon The voice of The Island since 1996
August 11, 2016
Bark in the Big Park A9
Live Music A18
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Turtle Season Winding Down
Around The Island
By Dale Rankin editor@islandmoon.com
It’s been too hot for Good Dogs on our little sandbar this week. We heard of one count of a Chihuahua hiding in an Island refrigerator. ¡Ay Chihuahua!
Line down If ever there was a question about how fragile our traffic flow is on The Island it was brought into clear focus Monday morning when a city crew towing a piece of heavy equipment along SPID struck a high
wire (or a low wire) near the SPID/ Aquarius intersection near where the new traffic light is being installed. The incident was not connected to the work on the intersection but it served to indicate what an impact a traffic impediment at that intersection can have. The line turned out to be a Grande Cable line and blocked traffic for about an hour and blew out service on The Island for the rest of the day. But during that hour traffic backed up to the City Limits on SH 361, past Whitecap on SPID, to the Aquarius extension on Commodores, and over the top of the JFK Causeway. AEP crews arrived at the scene first by since none of their lines were effected they couldn’t act. When Grande crews arrived the line was lifted to allow southbound traffic and one lane of northbound traffic. It took another hour, after the northbound lanes were both opened, for traffic flow to return to normal. There are now over 15,000 people living on The Island, about 3,3500 in Port Aransas and 12,000 on Mustang/ North Padre, and the vast majority access The Island over the JFK. The Metropolitan Planning Organization says the average of 32,000 vehicle that cross the JFK each day, a high of over 70,000 per day on peak days, will double in the next twenty years. As we reported in the last issue there are several measures underway to improve Island roads but as this episode clearly showed us having only four lanes on our main artery is a problem that gets worse with each passing year.
Way to go Kara! As we navigate the political season we should take time to send out a Moon commendation to Nueces County Clerk Kara Sands. She has been in office for less than two years but in that time has identified and fixed overcharges for voting expenses levied by that office to other governmental entities that had been going on for decades. She is in the process of allowing voters to cast ballots at any polling place on Election Day, in the past they could only vote at a polling place in their own precinct, and now has begun charging for holding elections, a function of that office, by voter rather than by polling place. This allocates funds not as a fee per polling place but rather as a user fee based on where people actually vote. She identified a problem in the Clerk’s office, ran on a promise to fix it, and when elected fixed it. That’s how participatory democracy is supposed to work.
Around continued on A4
The final turtle release of 2016 scheduled for this month. Full story on page A4
Island By The Numbers 15,500 people, $4.2 billion in property on Islands
Island By The Numbers will become a new feature of The Moon. If you have numbers of interest to our readers, please send them to editor@islandmoon.com
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4600 Single family dwellings on The Island
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2.27 People per dwelling on The Island
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$27 billion Total property value in Nueces County
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$2.2 billion Total property value on The Island
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$2.0 billion Total property value in Port Aransas
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$.606264 per $100 of property value The proposed tax rate for 2016-2017 for City of Corpus Christi.
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6.5% Increase in City of Corpus Christi taxes for 2017 based on 6.5% increase in total appraised value of property in City of Corpus Christi (The Corpus Christi City Council has scheduled hearings to maintain the 2015 tax for the 2016-2017
12,000 Padre/Mustang island Population (Estimate based on 2010 census, increase in voter registration since 2010 census, amount of new homes built since 2010)
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300 New houses built on Padre Island since January 1,2014
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3500 Port Aransas population (According to the city staff)
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316,381 Population City Corpus Christi (Source: Suburban Stats)
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359,715 Population Nueces County (Source: County Information Program, Texas Association of Counties)
budget meaning city taxes, and property tax revenue, will increase by 6.5%) •
.272191 per $100 of property value. The proposed tax rate for 2016-2017 for the City of Port Aransas
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1% Historical annual growth rate for the City of Corpus Christi rate over the last 20 years
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10% Historic annual growth rate for The Island over the last 20 years
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60% Corpus Christi population in the 21 to 64 age group
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70% Island population in the 21 to 64 year age group
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29% City of Corpus Christi in the 0 to 20 age group
Updating an Icon Harbor Bridge Project Underway By Todd Hunter State Representative District 32 The Coastal Bend is celebrating the official groundbreaking of the U.S. 181 Harbor Bridge Replacement Project. The long-
awaited Harbor Bridge project comes as a result of years of research and planning by local, state, and federal officials and community members in order to improve safety, connectivity, and
Numbers cont. on A15
Bridge cont. on A13
A little Island history
The Island Gets a Bird’s Eye View JFK Bridge Completed in 1973
By Mary Craft In 1973 the four lane “high bridge” with a 72 foot clearance replaced the two lane JFK causeway and swing bridge that was in place since 1950 when the iItracoastal was dredged. The JFK causeway was called the North Padre Island causeway before local area officials renamed it in the 60s. Many locals called it the Laguna Madre causeway. The swing bridge had openings on either side for small boats to pass. Whenever there was a ship to shore call from a barge, shrimp boat or sailboat to the sole bridge operator the two halves of the bridge swung open. The shrimpers had a field day when it was closed for a few hours because the current would run north pitching
hundreds of shrimp against the bridge. The shrimpers would swing their nets across the side of the bridge and peel off six to eight hundred pounds of shrimp. They would sell the shrimp to Gene at Billings Bait & Tackle (who is still there under the bridge) and he would haul them in a truck out to Gulf King Shrimp Company in Aransas Pass where they were processed and packaged then sent around the world. The town was known as the “Shrimp Capital of the World” until the company moved 34 of its vessels to Nicaragua in 1994.
Original bridge/causeway design later tweaked The new four mile bridge was constructed by Heldenfels Bros., Inc. which is a family owned
JFK Restaurant History continued on A4