The project was under investigation by multiple local, state and federal agencies, all concluding that no evidence of fraud or forgery was found.<\/p>\n
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 Heated discussions took place at City Hall Tuesday over a report that was supposed to be presented by the Corpus Christi Police Department.<\/p>\n
The topic centered on an investigation into the downtown Hilton Homewood Suites project.<\/p>\n
Local, state and federal agencies have closed their criminal investigations, determining there was no crime committed. However, City Council members were split on when they wanted to make the police department\u2019s findings available to the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe public has a right to know the conclusion of those five agencies,\u201d said Corpus Christi Mayor Paulette Guajardo, calling for the release of an investigation report by the Corpus Christi Police Department on the downtown Hilton Homewood Suites project.<\/p>\n
The issue became a hot topic after developers over the project, Elevate, were accused of altering documentation to get the green light to move forward. That prompted a lawsuit against the City of Corpus Christi and caused the city to eventually approve $400,000 for legal representation.<\/p>\n
The project was under investigation by multiple local, state and federal agencies, all concluding that no evidence of fraud or forgery was found.<\/p>\n
Even with those findings, council members remained at odds over when the report should be made public.<\/p>\n
Susie Saldana attended the meeting and says the report should have been released so city leaders could focus on more pressing issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it’s time that they put all this stuff behind them and start concentrating on what’s important to us, the water. That is our major emergency,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Saldana says Tuesday\u2019s outburst also called into question the City\u2019s transparency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re all of them arguing their point, and to me it’s terrible because it’s all political,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Corpus Christi At-Large Councilman Roland Barrera says he was in favor of hearing the report Tuesday afternoon, saying the investigations speak for themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cCCPD has reviewed it, the FBI has reviewed it, the Texas Rangers have reviewed it. Uh, the U.S. attorney and the district attorney, and they’ve all found that there’s no crime that has been committed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Barrera says the topic of the investigation report will be revisited sometime in mid-February. Officials say they will continue to provide updates as more information becomes available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The project was under investigation by multiple local, state and federal agencies, all concluding that no evidence of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-140784","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-corpus-christi","9":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","10":"tag-corpus-christi-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}