Port Aransas voters have approved a proposition to raise the local hotel occupancy tax to fund a venue project to fix up the Community Center, expand the Civic Center and upgrade streetscapes in Port Aransas, according to election results posted tonight (Tuesday, Nov. 4).<\/p>\n
Returns posted by the Nueces County Elections Department showed that 469 voters cast ballots in favor of the proposition, with 285 voting against it.<\/p>\n
The proposition will increase the local hotel-occupancy tax 2 percent to pay for the fixes and the upgrades. That will increase the rate from 13 to 15 percent.<\/p>\n
Customers pay the HOT tax as part of their bills when they stay at short-term rentals and hotels in Port Aransas.<\/p>\n
The extra HOT tax revenue will be used to pay for future streetscape improvements and reimburse the city for Civic Center and Community Center remodeling that\u2019s already underway.<\/p>\n
The $9.5 million Civic Center project involves expanding the building by 8,000 square feet, adding conference rooms and offices and enlarging the kitchen to allow more room for food preparation.<\/p>\n
Interior renovations include painting, adding a new ceiling, a stage overhaul and remodeling the foyer.<\/p>\n
The City Hall expansion happening in tandem with the Civic Center expansion won\u2019t be funded with the proposed proposition.<\/p>\n
City Manager David Parsons said the streetscape and pedestrian facility project would address some of the city\u2019s main streets: West Cotter Avenue to Station Street; Alister Street from Cotter Avenue to Avenue G; West Avenue G to the beach; and all of Avenue A.<\/p>\n
The work would update landscaping, sidewalks, lighting, trash cans, street furniture and other elements.<\/p>\n
Streets could be reconfigured for various purposes and could include parklets, bikeshare changes, \u201ctraffic calming\u201d measures and relocated curbs, according to election information issued by the city.<\/p>\n
(Watch for more in the Nov. 6 edition of the South Jetty. The edition will include news on which proposed state constitutional amendments were approved by Texas voters.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Port Aransas voters have approved a proposition to raise the local hotel occupancy tax to fund a venue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-35844","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\/35844","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=35844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}