CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — On Saturday the City of Corpus Christi held an event at the Corpus Christi Art Center celebrating City Manager Peter Zanoni and the city’s accomplishments. The event was not held last year because of the pandemic.
Residents came together at the event which had food trucks and alcoholic beverages, and were able to connect with city leaders and people in their community.
“My favorite part of Corpus Christi is the community and all the people that work together,” Lydia Nolen, a resident of Corpus Christi said.
Other resident said they were glad to celebrate a city that stays unified through thick and thin.
“What I like about Corpus Christi is that we’re all in it together. We stick together as a community, we help each other out in good times and bad times,” resident Stephanie Jordan said.
In attendance were city leaders like Ben Molina, Corpus Christi city council member for District 2. He said he is hoping to be proactive when it comes to hurricane season and have several sites where citizens can pick up sandbags before the hurricane season. He also said he’s proud of the progress he has made on Cole Park Pier.
“Serving on City Council…it’s allowed me to help my neighbors really. One of the biggest things right now that I talk about a lot is Cole Park Pier and that’s something that I’ve pushed forward and with the help of my colleagues on the council, full steam ahead, we expect it to be open on September first,” Molina said.
City Manager Peter Zanoni was celebrated at the event for the accomplishments he has made the past two years he has been the city manager of Corpus Christi.
Zanoni praised the city credit rating increasing twice in the two years he has been city manager, also celebrating the city’s first billion dollar budget. He celebrated the city’s pothole program and training more firefighters.
However, he said his greatest accomplishment was the amount of people he hired.
“The best thing that we’ve done and it’s the thing that I told the council we had to focus on first was building a strong leadership team, so rebuilding the top 60 professionals. I replaced or filled or brought in fifty percent of those processionals,” Zanoni said.
He said there’s a new streets director, new human resources director, and new airport leadership.
He said in ten years he could see the city’s population growing and with that would come diverse job opportunities.
“We’re going to see an even more robust city, one that focuses on education, different jobs. Right now we have heavy industry as a top choice maybe for jobs but alternative jobs, technology jobs, white collar jobs,” Zanoni said.
