The Island Moon Published by Island Moon Publishing, LLC 15201 S. Padre Island Drive Ste. 250 Corpus Christi, TX. 78418 editor@islandmoon.com (361) 949-7700
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Island Moon The Island Newspaper
Island Area News ● Events ● Entertainment
November 16, 2011
Photo by By Miles Merwin
Fighting Red Tide Since 1996
Around The Island
By Dale Rankin
editor@islandmoon.com
Next Publication Date: 11/30/2011
Inside the Moon...
Trivia Question of the Fortnight
ABK Boardsports Windsurfing Camps
This year marks the 37th year for the La Posada Lighted Boat Parade
Our dogs are sneezing. They have become lethargic and won’t bark at coyotes. Heck they might not even run if the coyotes are chasing them. It’s the Red Tide friends and it’s back. The runny eyes, the dry throats, the feeling that if you have to get off the couch it will require more effort than you possess. It’s the red tide what done it. The Red Tide bloom continues. When the wind shifted out of the north late last week the offshore boatpersons and the Port Aransas skydivers who were flying over the water reported that while the Red Swarm moved offshore for a while it was out there lurking. As soon as the wind shifted around to the southeast it came right back as strong as ever. Some of the people working outdoors near the water have resorted to wearing masks. Small fish kills were reported up and down The Island but so far none in the canals. It looks like nothing short of a prolonged north wind, rain, or a big cold front will get rid of it. Dr. Tom said in the last issue he’s getting patients coming in with symptoms. As for treatment, the only Moon remedy we’ve come up with is allergy medicine combined with lots of vitamin C and lots of water. Keep in mind we’re not doctors, just Red Tide victims. It seems to help if we stay indoors breathing Bought Air.
La Posada The La Posada Boat Lighted Boat Parade is almost upon us. Make sure to get to the kickoff party over at Scuttlebutts on Monday, November 28 and bring along a toy. If you plan on being in the parade you can fill out the entry form in this issue and bring it to the kickoff party. This year the parade will be held under a full moon so if the weather cooperates it should be a Parade to Remember.
Island Power We’ve been battling power outages again on our Island. Two swept across The Island early Sunday, thankfully after the football games were over, and on the west side of SPID lasted only a few minutes, but on the east side several hours. This is particularly frustrating to us because our annexation agreement with the city signed way back called for Island power lines to be buried. That fact is hard to forget when we’re stumbling around in the dark looking for a cigarette lighter.
Way to go Charlie Islander Charlie Zahn has been appointed to the Corpus Christi Port Commission marking the first time an Islander has ever been part of that board. The seven-member commission runs the fifth largest port in the country and having an Islander on it is a big deal as the push comes for the cruise industry to weight anchor here. Mr. Zahn has done good work as part of the Nueces County Coastal Parks Board and we congratulate him on his appointment by the Nueces County Commissioners to the port authority.
They did it!
There are few Islanders among us who have never thought about just getting rid of everything we own and sailing off into the sunset. A few over the years have done it. The latest are Islanders – now former Islanders - Meredith and Justin who sailed down the main canal just over a week ago for points east. They took an old 26-foot sailboat and scoured it down to Around Continued on A6
page A 2 Tracking Turtles Online
Page B 1 National Novel Writing Month
Page B 4 Local Music Scene
Can anyone tell us how the parade was started way back in 1974? We’ve talked to several people who were involved with the parade in the early years, but so far no one who was there right at the beginning. What we have been able to piece together is that it began when the Padre Island Yacht Club was located at the Club House of Anchor Resort. In the beginning the Yacht Club was not called that but instead was the Padre Island Sailing Society, as you might imagine that posed a problem when it came time to put the club’s name on flags for the parade. Since the entire Padre Island Sailing Society Name wouldn’t fit on the tiny flags the initials would have to be used. For obvious reasons the name had to be changed and the Padre Island Yacht Club was born.
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Year 15, Issue 401
La Posada
Parade Route
La Posada Parade Maps on Page A3 Maps on A3 2011 La Posada Ornaments are available at Seashore Charter School offices (SLC, SMA and Seashore Early Childhood Academy) as well as Isle Mail and More and Gold Falcon Jewelers. Thank you for supporting the Community Programs efforts to provide cost free events for La Posada!” We are only a few weeks away from the 37th Annual La Posada Lighted Boat Parade. This year’s event will be held under a full moon on both Friday and Saturday nights and the kickoff party is set for Monday, November 28, at Scuttlebutts Restaurant. This marks the first year the event has had a kickoff event and it is a chance to have some fun, get questions answered, register your boat for the parade and…did we mention have some fun. Part of the proceeds of the party will be donated to the event and to Toys for Tots. The boat parade is traditionally one of the biggest events in the state
for the Toys for Tots organization so please bring a toy to the event.
The party will run all afternoon and evening, from 3 – 10 p.m. with the Marines arriving about 5:00 o’clock.
The Parade will be held on Friday, December 9, and Saturday, December 10. For a complete map and the registration forms see the stories in this issue.
For more information contact Jim Weatherill at 361 774-0177.
38 years in the making
Aquarius Extension Project is Back on Track! Council approves funding Completion due in May 2012 By Dale Rankin
At least that’s the story we hear. If you can fill us in on details please e-mail or call us. Or is you just have a good story about an experience in the early parades we’d like to hear about those too; as the man said, when the legend become fact print the legend.
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Page B 8
Moon Rumor Control Aquarius is a Boondoggle, The SPID Bridge Can Kill Schlitterbahn, and The Island is About to be Overrun With Sewage Editor’s note: This is a new feature we decided to add this time. If there is one thing that can be said with certainty it is that word travels fast on our little Island. The Coconut Telegraph is a very efficient system on which good news travels fast, bad news travels faster. The problem is one of accuracy. According to the Moon Rumor Verification Department the CT’s accuracy rate is somewhere between three and four percent. It’s like a giant game of post office where a hangnail has turned into an ax murder by the time it gets through the watering holes, workout rooms, bridge clubs, boat clubs, beauty shops, civic organizations, freelance prevaricators and malicious fabricators. Relying on this as a means of gathering information is like asking a taxi driver how to coach a football team. He has all kinds of opinions on how to call the plays but doesn’t know the names of any of the players. Many of the rumors that make the rounds have been addressed at meetings of the Island Strategic Action Committee. They meet the first Tuesday of each month at 5:30 p.m. at the Padre Isles Country Club. Go there and ask questions and you will get answers. So here’s the deal: You hear a rumor you think might be true, you let us know and we’ll check it out; sort of like an Island Snopes. Here are the latest we’ve heard and what we know about them. The current Aquarius project is an attempt by the developer to get the city to pay for a street he promised to pay for. We had to call the Moon Department of Redundancy Department for this one as we have addressed it many times. Aquarius was placed on the 2004
bond package at the request of then Mayor Henry Garrett as a safety measure so that fire trucks and other emergency vehicles could get across The Island quickly. It was approved by voters citywide to spend $1.4 million to build it with the idea that its route would likely be changed and the bond funds were set aside.
Thirty eight years after first being placed on a platting map Aquarius Street between Commodores and Dasmarinas looks like it is about to become a reality. After nearly two hours in executive session The Corpus Christi City Council in less than thirty seconds on Tuesday voted unanimously to approved $1.3 million in general fund money to pay for completion of a 50-feet wide Aquarius
extension complete with sidewalks, bike trails, and a median of nearly 20 feet through what is now a vacant lot behind the Padre Isles Country Club. The extension will connect the existing Aquarius Street from the point where it intersects with Dasmarinas on the south, to a point on the north that is directly across Commodores from the existing fire stations. (For more on the history of this project see the item
Aquarius Continued on A3
Is it Time to Ban the Bag? By Dale Rankin
The city kept putting off the project and the developer who owns the adjacent land, Paul Schexnailder, did not want the project done until the area was developed. City policy says that new streets will be paid for by the developer at the time the area is built out and reimbursed though tax incentives. But in this case, at the behest of Islanders and the specific direction of the Mayor the Aquarius project was pushed forward with taxpayer dollars for public safety reasons. Over the ensuing seven years the project went through several changes as city staff, spurred by Islanders, pushed to have the road finished. Schexnailder as much as he was able encouraged them to hold off. Payment was not the issue, it was design. Finally, within the last year the Island Strategic Action Committee pushed the city staff and a plan was forged. A more direct route was designed that instead of connecting the two ends of existing Aquarius, cuts across Schexnailder’s land in a much more direct route and connects on the north side to Commodores across the street from the fire station. The new route was shorter, cheaper by about $300,000 and would include a median, sidewalks, and bike path. The problem was that city owned the easement for the old route but Schexnailder owned the easement for the new, more common sense route. At the city’s request he traded Rumor Continued on A6
When it comes to pollution on our Island it’s easy to round up the usual suspects. First, comes Bubba’s beer cans. Why anyone would think it is acceptable to drive off and leave their beer cans on the beach – forget bottles – defies logic. Over the years there have been various attempts to police this problem and it has always come down to this; throwing the can/ bottles on the sand is not in itself against the law. It only becomes illegal when the person drives off and leaves them behind. So if an enforcement person sees a guy sitting on the beach drinking an Acme Beer and there is an empty six pack ring holder lying on the ground next to five empty Acme Beer cans there is no violation until the guy gets in his car and heads off down the beach. At that point
when he is pulled over littering is the least of his problems. One suggested solution is to have life guards or those checking for beach parking stickers to write tickets for littering; however, it would require training and training costs money. So there isn’t much we can do about Bubba’s beer cans right now. CCPD Captain Tim Wilson, who patrols The Island, suggests we ask Stripes to not sell beer in bottles during Spring Break. That sounds like an idea worth pursuing. So for now beach beer bottle and can littering isn’t going to get much better. But for the second great Island polluter this is something that can be done.
Ban the Bag How many of us have gone to an Island Stripes store and
walked out with our purchase in a plastic bag and headed for the beach? When you get there you empty out the bag and leave it on the seat with the intention of using it for trash and walking off. Then a few minutes later a gust of wind whips that thing out the open window and you find yourself chasing it down the beach and every time you get close it swirls up in the air and the chase begins anew. After a few minutes of looking like an idiot you stop and look around to see if anyone is watching. If not, then you are faced with a moral dilemma; should I continue chasing this thing or just go back to my lawn chair?
The folks down in Brownsville had the same problem and did something about it. They Banned the Bag. More
Ban the Bag Cont. on A6