Number 24

Chip sealed roads.  Corpus is a giant parking lot and that parking lot is covered in chip seal.  Chip seal is a cheap alternative to good asphalt which is a cheap alternative to concrete.  Chip seal is a process of covering a road in rocks and then gluing them down with an oily binder in order to prolong the life of the road.  The surface is loud, damages tires, is unstable for motor and bicyclists, washes off to clog drains and damage windshields and is harmful to the environment.  It's lousy, cheap and temporary--the ethos of Corpus' City Council.  Of course, cheap is relative.  This fall the city spent over $66,000 on emulsion oil, $36,000 on pavement markings and $454,000 on the actual asphalt and aggregate.  And their recent road projects include covering the good Island road to the National Seashore with chip seal to use up end of fiscal year money and also to resurface ocean drive, simply transforming it from one kind of lousy to another.

Number 23

Corpus Christi loves Wal-Mart.  This is the Chamber of Commerce celebrating the remodel of their flagship in an armada of the Arkansas box chain.

Number 22

Corpus Christi has its own cartoon cast of local celebrities championing the uber-conservative, anti civil liberties, anti-oversight, pro-Corpus ethos.  One of the more noxious is Eric von Wade, host of the Eric von Wade show on AM 1440.  On his linked-in bio he describes himself as "a compelling and dynamic catalyst in the social and political landscape of South Texas." Interesting.  Almost as interesting as today's featured topic on his website: "White Guilt is Dead." After managing to remain in Corpus for high school, community college and university, V-dub joined the shriners and the masons and made the news recently after contracting staff infection.  Eric von Wade, reason number 22 Why Corpus Christi Sucks.

Number 21

Corpus is surrounded by uranium mines and processing facilities. The Alta Mesa project in Brooks County, the Hobson uranium processing plant in Karnes County, the Palangana, Vasquez, Holiday and El Mesquite mines in Duval County, the Kingsville Dome plant in Kleberg County and the Rosita mine. These plants and mines tap into the South Texas Uranium trend that makes South Texas the third largest uranium producer in the US. Not exactly an accolade that brings in newlyweds and young families. The EPA issues warnings to residents in the surrounding areas that their water is unsafe. Residents have complained that the contamination is the result of mining and processing, but industry reps assert that the leaching is natural and unrelated to their extraction activities: "Mark Pelizza, U-R-I Vice President, "So it's not the exploration that causes any kind of contamination. It's mother nature who has put the uranium there and mother nature has cause it to occur naturally [KIII TV]." Families can't afford to leave their homes because no one wants to buy property that is poisoned by uranium facilities. The uranium in South Texas is extracted through a process called ISL (in situ leaching) by which a solution is washed through the uranium-containing material and collected. The process is allegedly safe, but one can only imagine that swishing nuclear mouthwash beneath the soil can't have a positive effect on our groundwater and soil.

Number 20

Whataburger leaves Corpus Christi. Yesterday, the fast food chain announced they were relocating their headquarters from Corpus to San Antonio. First, of course they're moving. San Antonio has far more resources for a large company and a much higher quality of life for their employees. HEB made the same move 23 years ago after headquartering in Corpus for 45 years. This shouldn't come as a shock that an organization with the means would pack up and high-tail it out of here, but it shouldn't be as big a concern either. The City Council and Economic Development board is concerned only with number of jobs and average salary, but never with the type of jobs and quality of life: "The types of jobs leaving the area are high-paying, technical jobs. These are the types of jobs the area is trying to attract, Mower said [caller times]." And that is why companies leave. Because we focus on the numbers instead of the substance behind them. What city would want to pin its reputation on petrochemicals and fast food anyway? Corpus' natural resources are bittersweet. On the one hand they offer obvious and plentiful economic opportunity, but on the other they blind our civic leaders to the creative energy and potential of our citizens. It's been said that businesses won't invest in the city of Corpus because the city won't invest in itself. Whataburger and HEB are proof of that. Our infrastructure is crumbling, we permit industry to exploit our neighbors, our city is dangerous and our citizens are poorly educated. A city is a place to live not just a resource for business, the Council would do well to remember that.

Number 19

The Transportation section of the Preliminary III Community Profile for the BoldFuture Initiative is troubling. Corpus Christi road conditions rank below the State average and will require $63 million more than projected State and Federal transportation dollars for the next four years. If supply of transportation dollars can't match our demand in terms of use, then why are we proposing new construction? If we don't have the funding now to maintain our automobile infrastructure and we won't have it in five years, surely we can expect further deterioration of our roads.

It seems reckless to propose new construction such as the Trans Texas Corridor and new Harbor Bridge. The new Harbor Bridge alone would equal more than 10 years of what it would cost to raise our roads to the State average. The new bridge represents stepping back a decade for Corpus Christi's roads. These Quixotic plans will be an exponentially increasing burden on our transportation infrastructure.

Additionally, the marginal attention given to pedestrian and cyclist access is a concern. Why would the city ask the question "How can we improve hike and bike trails?" when the MPO commissioned and the City Council in 2005 approved a Bicycle Pedestrian Plan? Not only has this plan been ignored, but recent work along Ocean drive is in direct conflict with the suggestions made in the plan.

If the City of Corpus Christi would invest more in public transportation and provide more for pedestrians and cyclists, we could reduce our impact on our roads. And if we focused on maintaining our current infrastructure instead of adding to it, we could hope to stretch our transportation dollars further and one day catch up to where we need to be.

Number 18

The SPID is part of what's wrong with Corpus Christi. The mistake our planners and traffic engineers make is evaluating traffic with a single metric: travel times. Their focus is to move people from A to B as fast as possible. There is no consideration for the integrity and livability of our neighborhoods. A sense of community is sacrificed for a faster commute. And as traffic and traffic engineers adapt to a developing cityscape, so does that development adapt to the new traffic patterns. The city makes roads wider and faster to get from the suburbs to the business centers and now, in order to take advantage of the easier transit, the suburbs expand. Fewer people live near where they work, our city separates into arbitrary zones and our roads, especially our major thoroughfares play an increasingly larger role in our lives.

We should ask ourselves what we want that role to be. How crucial do we want the SPID to be to our city? You can see from satellite maps that we've already answered that question. Businesses have been drawn to the frontage roads in response to the increasing number of trips that incorporate the SPID. The only way to get anywhere here is to drive and the only way to drive anywhere is on the SPID.

What does that mean for Corpus citizens? It means that our local neighborhood roads get less attention as the constant construction and deconstruction on 358 continues. It means our grocery stores will get bigger and farther away. It means you are increasingly less likely to work anywhere near where you live.

The SPID, though, isn't an isolated event. It's symptomatic of a larger culture of convenience and immediacy, a culture reactive to marketing, a culture without identity, ignorant of its future.

The Enduro Unit

It's funny to see overweight police officers struggling to control Suzuki dirt bikes. It's annoying that this is funded by our tax dollars. It's tragic, though, that this is our solution to "transients." Corpus Christi Police Captain Todd Green reportedly said the motorbike unit was established to address aggressive panhandlers, trespassing, alcohol- and drug-related crimes, tagging and auto burglaries [caller times]. Captain Wayne Tisdale amplified the purpose of the unit: to prevent the transient population from committing crimes. How we treat our fellow humans defines us. Whether they're sightly or economically productive, these "transients" are our fellow citizens and how we treat them is a statement of who we are. Empty citations are hardly the answer, nor is herding and chasing our poor and homeless on dirt bikes. Our impoverished and indigent are part of our city, we can't hide them or chase them away. Their suffering is our failure. The solution to our transient population is constant attention. They're not going anywhere and many will never incorporate. We can only tend to them as our consciences dictate, as our humanity requires.

Number 17

New toys present Corpus Cops a new opportunity to harass the homeless. Not content to simply sequester the poor and homeless in the most dangerous and polluted corners of the city, our cops now pursue them off-road on Power Ranger bikes.

In the below video you can watch Corpus Cops earning their motor bike merit badges and trying out to be clumsy-but-lovable superhero sidekicks.

Number 16

Our Police Chief is Corky St. Clair.