Rocha said water reliability, public safety and basic services are top priorities as he enters the race ahead of filing season. An announcement is set for April 8.<\/p>\n
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 Former Corpus Christi Fire Chief Robert Rocha is entering the city council race months ahead of the typical filing period, saying he wants to focus on water reliability, public safety and basic city services.<\/p>\n
3NEWS caught up with Rocha at the CCPD Academy after his early announcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that there’s a need for some improvement as to what’s going on within our city,\u201d Rocha said. \u201cI think there needs to be a concentration on the basic needs that our residents have, and that would include a reliable water resource. It would include concentration on public safety, and I think it would include taking care of our senior citizens, and I don’t know if all of those things are being addressed right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rocha said he has not yet decided which seat he will pursue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what I would like to do is for residents to, if they could attend the open house I’m going to have at Atwell Suites on the 8th of April, I’ll make my announcement as to what race I’m going to run into,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Water remains a central issue in his campaign, particularly as the city continues to face drought conditions and restrictions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don’t have a reliable water source with the Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon,\u201d Rocha said. \u201cWe can’t always rely on that water to be always readily available as well as the Mary Rhodes Pipeline. I think with the Gulf that we have right next to us, we have a reliable water source. Desalinization is working all throughout the world. Why can’t it work here in Corpus Christi?\u201d<\/p>\n
Rocha also pointed to frustration among residents as restrictions continue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think residents are upset. I think residents are tired of the fact that we can’t even water our lawn, water our plants, wash our vehicle,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said his background in public service and local government decision-making would guide his approach if elected.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there needs to be a solution to the water issue and I think I can bring experience in governance, local community government in evaluating a problem, looking at the solutions, selecting one solution and voting on it,\u201d Rocha said. \u201cI think I’m a person that has been known to make decisions and I look forward to running for city council.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rocha said water reliability, public safety and basic services are top priorities as he enters the race ahead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-220854","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\/220854","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=220854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}