The
Issue 570
Island Moon
The voice of The Island since 1996
March 19, 2015
Around The Island By Dale Rankin
Padre Isles Property Owners Annual Meeting – Questions and Answers
editor@islandmoon.com So far Spring Break 2015 has reminded us a bit of the old post cards that read “Weather is here, wish you were beautiful!” The weather hasn’t been all that beautiful as of this writing at mid-week and the Spring Break crowds have shown it, and for we Islanders that is beautiful in an overcast kind of way. We have a photo tour of local beaches in this issue.
By Dale Rankin The annual meeting of the Padre Isles Property Owners Association met last Saturday and drew a full house, the largest crowd ever, at the Seashore Gymnasium. The meeting consisted of presentations by the Board of Directors followed by questions from the audience. Here is a summation: Item: The POA Board will move forward with plans to ask members to vote on whether to modify Article #9 of the POA Articles of Incorporation which prohibits the board from spending more than 20% (currently about $300,000 annually) of the money collected from dues each year (currently about $1.6 million) on capital projects. The articles currently allow the board to exceed that amount for emergencies, but not for a community center or other non-emergency items. The change in Article #9 would allow the board to move forward with construction on the $2.3 million center, as well as other projects that require more than
Last Friday on Ellis Beach To Dog or not to Dog The Big Spring Break Question so far is whether dogs are allowed on city beaches. We have had numerous reports of dog owners being given warnings for having dogs on the beach at the seawall and the SoPack beach. Frankly, there is much confusion and when you start messing with Island dogs we Island humans bite.
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Photo by Miles Merwin
Spring Break 2015
Where the Beach Crowds Gather – and Where They Don’t
By Dale Rankin The first big weekend of Spring Break 2015 was not as crowded as expected due to overcast skies and water temperature in the high 50s. But a check of local beaches showed where the crowds gather in the 26 miles of beach from the jetties in Port Aransas in the north to the boundary of Padre Island National Seashore in the south. The patterns that emerge this year will form the basis for beach management in the next few years. The City of Corpus Christi and the Metropolitan Planning Organization are conducting a traffic count to get a comprehensive snapshot of traffic patterns this summer.
Spring Break 2015 in Port A
Here is a look at where the Spring Breakers were – and where they weren’t – last weekend.
The beach in Kleberg County was packed
Whitecap beach was a popular destination.
The beach at North Packery
The pedestrian beach along the seawall was a lonely place.
POA continued on A5
The Passing of Big Foot By Jackie Bales
We checked with police at the temporary station at American Bank on Saturday and were told only normal leash laws applied on all city beaches during Spring Break. We called the city information number and were told “no dogs anywhere on city beaches during Spring Break.” So we called the primary source for such things, Martha Lawhon, who is the city’s Administrative Assistant for Beach Operations and who has final say on the matter and Martha says, as in Spring Breaks past, dogs are allowed on city beaches during Spring Break except between Access Road #3 southward to Packery Channel. She sent us this pamphlet put out by the city and handed out with Beach Parking Permits. It may be that the confusion, aside from the person answering the phone at the city’s customer hotline, is coming from folks reading the first line and not the body copy:
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It was a rather odd sight watching this gargantuan tower of lights creeping down the ship channel in the middle of the night. They call it Big Foot for a reason. It was difficult get a prospective on just how large it really was until it came closer and closer with the drone of the large towboat engines. In the early morning hours of Saturday, 14th it was more reminiscent of a downtown high rise in lower Manhattan. Despite the night time departure on Friday, 13th, hundreds of locals and tourist turned out to witness the spectacle. It was lit up like the world’s largest Christmas tree.
Inside the Moon Port A last Saturday. Notice the empty beach (top) where the bollards are located. Photo by John E. Bravo
Four-wheelers have cut a road thrugh the dunes on the beach in Kleberg County.
$1.2 Million Expansion at Padre Balli The Nueces County Park Board getting ready for bids on $1.2 million in improvements at Padre Balli Park which include an expanded RV park, a community center, and expanded Briscoe-King Pavilion, an outdoor amphitheater, an expanded tent camping area.
Pirate Attack in Port A! A2
The Nueces County Coastal Parks Board approved the plan in the meeting in February and Naismith Engineering said they expect to be ready for bids within sixty days. Here are the plans.
So if Island humans are confused it is up to Island dogs to jump in the car and go, as long as you aren’t going to NoPack Beach.
Gambling on Windstorm There are now four bills filed in the Texas Legislature regarding Windstorm, we’ll get into details on the mirror bills filed by District 32 State Representative Todd Hunter in the House and District 20 State Senator Chuy Hinojosa in the Senate which look to have the best chance of being signed into law and, if so, will expand the risk pool for wind/ hurricane damage from the current 14 counties along the Texas Coast to include rate payers in the entire state; a change that is long overdue. However, the most interesting of the bills comes from State Representative Joe Deshotel (D) Beaumont. HB 3839 and House Joint Resolution 142 would need 100 votes in the 150 House to move forward as a constitutional amendment and proposes to use proceeds from Las Vegas style casinos located within coastal counties or in counties where the county seat is within 100 miles of a coastal county to offset the cost of rising Windstorm Insurance along the coast. So far Deshotel has no cosponsor in the Senate and you can bet his plan will draw intense lobbying efforts from gaming interests in Louisiana and Oklahoma which reap billions each year in Texas gaming money. This is the nuclear option for solving the Windstorm problem, but hey, this is the Legislature where anything can happen. Stay tuned. In the meantime say hello if you see us Around The Island.
The massive deck structure was built by the Daewood Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Company in Korea. It set to sea, in December of 2012, aboard a specially made ship named the Dockwise Mighty Servant 1, bound for the Gulf Marine Fabrication yard in Aransas Pass, Texas. The three month journey was
Island Fisherman Honored A6
Big Foot continued on A9
Farah's Fishing Adventures A7
A little Island history
A Fight to the Death in the Texas Hill Country
Editor’s note: In the years leading up to his death in the Alamo 179 years ago this month Jim Bowie spent many years in Texas seeking his fortune. One of his endeavors was to locate the lost silver mines near San Saba, but instead he found a fight with the Indians. By Dale Rankin Jim Bowie may have been most famous for the knife made and given to him by his brother but his passion during his life was for two things – money and land; and getting as much as he could get his hands on either in any way he could. The presence of silver in the area around the San Saba settlement in present day Llano County was first discovered by the Indians who told
the Spaniards of its presence when the Spaniards went to the area in 1753 seeking a site for an Apache mission. In February 1756 an expedition led by Bernardo de Miranda y Flores left San Antonio with twenty-three soldiers and citizens. Miranda reported that the ore veins he found were so abundant that he guaranteed "a mine to each of the inhabitants of the province of Texas." He returned to San Antonio and sent a threepound ore sample to the viceroy in Mexico City for assay – who told him to go back and get forty wagons loads and bring them back – which never happened.
Into Indian country The mines were in country and for years the location of the around San Antonio
hostile Indian maps showing mines floated like so many
Spring Break 2015 A4, A11
Alamo Plaza early 1800s sheets in the wind but no one mounted a serious effort to find them until Bowie set out from San Antonio on November 2, 1821. With a group of about a dozen men including his brother Rezin they were bound for San Saba under the guidance of a friend of Bowie’s
History continued on A6
Live Music A16