It always makes you feel good when someone heeds to the advice you give them. That is what the city of Corpus Christi has done by reading some of our articles here at Loose Topics. (Of course we cannot prove this, but who doesn't read our articles).
A few days ago we reported on how the city could use our hotel/motel tax revenue that the city collects to fund some of the cities programs and departments. Now we have already stated which programs we would like to see the city use the revenue on (public safety and senor centers). But to be honest, if the city has decided to use it at all to fund or help fund certain projects, then that is a step in the right direction.
So this morning we at Loose Topics had our cups of coffee and sat down with our selection of resources we use for topics. One of them happens to be the local newspaper. What do you know on the front page it is reported that the city has found 700,000 extra dollars in their hotel/motel tax fund. That is right 700,000 leftover dollars. This means that after all normal expenditures came out of that fund we still had nearly 3/4 of a million dollars left in it. That number, which is quite astonishing really, caught our attention and we read on.
The city council has stated they would like to use some of the leftover money to help with our beach maintenance program. Not the exact program we had in mind, but like we said it is a step in the right direction. It was reported that last year's beach maintenance total was 800,000 dollars. This includes Mcgee beach, Corpus Christi beach and Padre and Mustang Island. Maintaining our beaches is defiantly a priority, where on the priority list it is is debatable. As we have said many times before our biggest attraction here in this city is our beaches, so maintaining so that people want to re-visit them time and time again is important. So by using some of the hotel/motel tax revenue makes perfect sense to us. That revenue is to be spent on things that brings our city more business and one of our biggest businesses here is tourism. So what better way to advertise our city then with impeccable beaches. Go to South Padre, any beach in Florida or California, they are always well kept, attracting repeat visitors.
Now we here do not agree with everything the city council has suggested about using this extra money for. The council wants to use 270,000 dollars of the 700,000 leftover dollars to hire three more maintenance crew workers. With some quick math here, that is a salary of 90,000 dollars to push seaweed around with a bull dozer. That seems alittle over paid for that position.
Last years reported 800,000 dollar total was paid for from the money collected from a portion of the beach parking permit sales, some from the hotel/motel tax and some from the General Land Office reimbursements.
Why are we only using a portion of the money that comes from beach parking permit sales? The city is making people have a permit to access our beach, so all of that money should be put back into the beach. Every penny from permit sales should be used for beach maintenance and nothing else. The money comes from the beach and should stay with the beach. When a vehicle is found on the beach to not have a beach permit, we need to make them purchase a permit right then and there or give them a citation. Do not allow them just to leave. They broke a city ordinance. The money that is collected from those citations should also go into the beach maintenance fund.
A council member was quoted as saying that using this fund is a one time solution to a long term problem. No it isnt. That money is always there, collected every year. Obviously we have "leftover" money in there every year as well. It would be naive of us to think that this is the only year there was leftover money in the hotel/motel tax fund.
The long term solution sits right before the council members eyes, yet they choose to not see it. It was recommended by city staff to move the development restriction on beach property from 350 feet to 200 feet. Allowing developers to establish businesses closer to the beach, which is a huge attraction. City staff states that by doing this it would keep us competitive with Port Aransas in beach development. Been to Port A lately? They have restaurants, hotels, bars, cafes, shops all within walking distance of their beaches. Do we? Nope.
If we are allowed to put more hotel, resort, restaurants and shops closer to our main attraction, the beach, it will increase our tourist flow. We will not lose these people to Port Aransas or South Padre. They will stay here and spend their hard earned money here. This in turn will put more money into the hotel/motel tax fund. It is simple economics really.
The city does not want to move the restriction distance, citing it will effect our dunes. Port Aransas has dunes, South Padre has dunes and they both face the same beach erosion and flooding problems we do. What their cities know, that ours cannot figure out, is that the beach is why people come to their city. So they give them as many amenities as possible, withing walking distance to the beach. It works both of those cities are thriving right now.
It is not often that we find ourselves applauding things the city here does. So at this time we are giving them a very light golf clap. You know the one that say good job, but keep trying. They are moving in the right direction, but must think larger in scale. We must use are resources here to generate new businesses and more revenue. Our biggest resource is our beach, lets use it to its full potential.
On a side note it was also noted that city council wanted to allocate 170,000 dollars to the Art Museum here and 10,000 dollars to the Botanical Gardens. For that we give them another golf clap. Using leftover money that we have generated from the hotel/motel for improvement to city programs is a good thing. That keeps the tax payer from have to make up that money somewhere.
Our city council, with city staff, need to really consider raising the hotel tax and bring in more luxury hotel and resorts. We can already see how it can be beneficial, we had 3/4 of a million dollars leftover to use on other programs. If the city is smart they will see that we can generate even more that way, if they allow it.
Tell us what you think about the beaches, the hotel tax and using the leftover money?
4 comments:
You are right, why is it a city that prides itself on tourism does so little for tourists. We continually run off tourist attractions like resorts, bass pro, sea world, and soon schliterbaun for what an aquarium and a 2.5 acre water park. If we had half those developments tourism would have doubled at minimum not to mention all of the additional hotels that would follow. But instead of reinvesting in one of our biggest resources we use the money for consultants. Hopefully after the new city manager cleans up city hall he will actually do something for the tourists. We aren't anything new, cities all over the world have it figured out, why can't we.
@Anonymous thank for your comment, please sign up to follow us and subscribe via email. I do agree with you that this city attempts to pride itself in tourism, yet we really offer very little. We have lost out on Bass Pro Shop, Outlet Malls, and probably soon Schlitterbahn. We have lost 2 golf course in the last year. Yes we may get a 2.5 acre water park in the overcrowded area of the Port. But this city is missing the point of why people visit here. The water not the heavily concreted area under a bridge. Why we keep building there I have no idea, oh wait yes I do. Take a look at comparable cities South Padre generates approx. 5 million dollars a year in their hotel tax. They are smaller city in size and pop. Look at Port Aransas a very small town yet they can raise over 350,000 dollars in their hotel tax revenue. The city of Galveston which by size and pop. is small then Corpus has way more luxury hotels, those are ones that charge 300 or more dollars a night. Their revenue per room is up 18% in the last year. CC revenue per room only went up 8.8% in the same year. Galveston has a occupancy of approx. 64% and CC has a rate of 66% we just have cheaper hotels and less of them. Another problem we have, and it still involves hotels, is the American Bank Center. This center could be used to draw in huge conventions from around the state. Possibly weeklong conventions or even just conventions on the weekends. But even if we did attract them, we dont have the hotel space to house them. Take another look at Galveston, they bring in conventions from all parts of the state and even some from out of state. 70% of the conventions that Galveston houses are from out of city groups. By the end of this year Galveston will have hosted over 68 conventions with over 30,000 people attended. Galveston's convention center which cost 30 million dollars to build is built on their sea wall, just like ours. The money to build the convention center was raised by increasing the city;s hotel tax by 2%. The building of the convention centeralong the sea wall spurred other hotels and businesses to be built. Their city new that ours doesnt. We have so much potential here in CC but our leaders do not seem to what want to develop it. I hope we can because I do love our city we just need leaders that can see the big picture. As to our city manager here he is trying and that is a good thing, but I have some concerns about him as well. He is I believe 62 years old, so how long does he really plan on staying here? 2 years maybe three. Is that long enough for him to turn this city around completely? I dont think so, we will have to see.
I agree about the city manager but at least the council saw a need in a change. Baby steps.
John
@John thank you for your comment please sign up to follow us and subscribe via email if you havent already. Yes the concerns about the city manger are valid, we can be assure he will not be here for the next 10 years. I am glad the council saw a need for change as well and so far he has done a decent job. Like we said in the article any steps forward are good steps. With his track record I believe he will do a good job here improving our city as long as the council stay out of the way. They seem to be the biggest obstacle, but then again they were voted in by the people, so what does that say. We are moving in a forward direction, which is always better then moving backwards, so there is hope still.
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