CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Tuesday's election night resulted in the convincing defeat of Corpus Christi's proposition A. Nearly 70% of the 21,278 voters, voted against the proposition.
This would have repurposed the city's use of Type A funds. Currently 1/4 of a cent of of a dollar of city sales tax is used to pay off the debt and pay for maintenance on the Seawall and American Bank Center.
Corpus Christi was asking voters to allow the repurposing of this tax money when the obligation to those payments ends in 2025 and 2026.
If it passed, the money would have been put towards regional parks, industrial roads, attracting new flights to Corpus Christi and the Convention Center Complex. Included in the complex was everything inside the American Bank Center, the Seawall and the possibility of a headquarters hotel.
Type A funds can only be used for economic development, per law. The money could not be put towards things like residential street repairs.
City officials hoped this would begin to move the city forward to more tourism and business.
City Councilman Gil Hernandez said he felt the proposition had been doomed for weeks. He believes the process was rushed and the language was too vague.
“You have to have the community engagement," Hernandez said. "You have to have community input. You got to have a more robust plan. You have to have some guardrails as to what investment you put into a convention center hotel if any. But you got to get that input.”
Opponents to the proposition didn't like the city having a hand in bringing in a hotel. They also wanted to have more community engagement in the process of deciding how to use the money.
“We felt that if they done a real community process where they listen to what improvements voters wanted, they never would have had a hotel or doubling the size of the convention center on the ballot,” David Loeb, a resident against Proposition A said.
Type A Funds were identified as one of five funding sources for the city to enhance the convention center complex.
Corpus Christi Mayor Paulette Guajardo provided this statement after the results came in:
"I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the voters of Corpus Christi.
I believe voting allows an important opportunity for a community’s voice to be heard. In response to the outcome of this election, I will be working with the City Council to assemble a committee that will assist in paving the road forward.
Today, we will move forward united and as a community."
The city has the ability to try and ask the voters to repurpose Type A Funds in next year's election. Hernandez said he would like to have community engagement during the process of putting it on the 2024 ballot.
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