Padre Island\u2019s Commodore Park Set for Major Upgrades<\/a><\/p>\nMeanwhile, business owners said the program has helped them grow and they’re keeping a close eye on what happens next.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sarah Flores is co-owner of a new downtown Corpus Christi restaurant —-Streat Corner Kitchen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The TIRZ program is a reimbursement program, but it’s an incentive for business owners to come out into certain areas and reinvest into specific properties,” Flores said. “Yeah, without the tourist process I don’t know that we would have ever been able to open this restaurant. It has been extremely helpful in so many different ways.”<\/p>\n
But changes to the TIRZ policy could be on the way, as Nueces County Commissioners said their hands are tied with the limited funds they have.<\/p>\n
“Can’t afford TIRZ when I can’t get a tax increase to give my employees benefits and their pay skill. And I got every department in here complaining, saying they can’t keep people. There’s a balance for us and there’s an obligation and responsibility but we have to take care of county responsibilities first,” said Nueces County Judge Connie Scott said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Commissioner Precinct 1 Mike Pusley said property taxes are the county’s only source of revenue \u2014 and with the Legislature capping tax increases, it’s putting a strain on county government.<\/p>\n
“We get about a million and a half dollars off of personal property taxes every year and that’s it. The rest of it we have to make about property taxes. And the state of Texas, the Legislature is on a mission to cut property taxes wherever they can and it hits us very hard,” Pusley said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Flores took the stand with other business owners to prevent changes to the TIRZ policy.<\/p>\n
“I would hate to see some kind of any kind of cuts towards the policy or any kind of budget cuts towards it because we are just really making ground right now and we don’t need that to pause or stay stagnant. We need to continue pushing for more growth instead of pausing it,” Flores said.<\/p>\n
Commissioners assure the community the changes that will be made will be fair to all areas across the county.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Coming up with a draft of a policy with how we treat all TIRZ, not only the ones we have now but the ones in the future. That we can at least participate at some level, it might not be at the level we’re doing now, but I think all of us agree there is a benefit to theses tax increment reinvestment zones if they’re done correctly but we’re trying to draft up something that will continues us to be in the ball game,” Pusley said.<\/p>\n
County commissioners tonight voted to keep TIRZ 3 mainly in place. Commissioner John Marez told 3News any policy changes made by the county will take effect after 2028.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Business owners say the TIRZ program has fueled local growth, but county leaders argue limited funds and tax…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-16563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16563","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=16563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}