By KREIG KOHL
Special to the PRESS
March 1, 2023, saw the regular meeting of the South Padre Island City Council. The meeting began with public comments and announcements.
Mayor Mcnulty noted that both January Hotel Occupancy Tax and December Sales Tax were seeing an increase in revenue and also made mention of a legislative trip that was taken to Austin in which the addition of a second causeway for the Island was discussed.
He finished by saying that anyone who had complaints about the causeway repairs, which just concluded, should take them to the Texas Department of Transportation, as the complaints show just how much a second causeway is needed.
“When the bridge was built years and years ago, it had a lifespan, and we’re beyond that lifespan expectancy. We have to put up with a lot, but construction has to go on. It’s got to be maintained, or else we lose the bridge,” said Council Member Kerry Schwartz.
Schwartz’s second statement was on the flashing yellow pedestrian lights on Padre Boulevard.
“We as a city have reached out to TxDot numerous times with plans and ideas of having a flashing red light. I know at least five times we submitted plans. TxDot owns the boulevard and they have denied us each time. Some changes have taken place recently and we are now reaching out with additional plans,” said Schwartz.
The first public comment was made by Jim Grussard of the Gulf Guardians. He began saying, “Over the last three years my wife and I have been collecting trash from the beaches of South Padre Island, and we’ve collected an excess of three years of over five hundred and eighty pounds of trash.”
Grussard continued to say he noticed the large majority of the trash in the cans on the beach are aluminum cans, which, according to him, a recycling company told him will pay for the cans at around sixty-five cents per pound. His proposal is a pilot project to have a secondary can added beside some of the beach cans already out on the beach that would only accept aluminum cans.
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