Petition at risk-=- Bull Crap it is!!

Council vote could require drive to start over

Just south of the seawall on Padre Island is an additional 3,200 feet of beach that Austin developer Paul Schexnailder and City Councilman Mark Scott have proposed to close to vehicle traffic.


Almost two months of petitioning may have been for nothing, but the group trying to put the vehicle ban on 4,200 feet of Padre Island beach to a vote said that if necessary, it is ready to start over.

Mayor Henry Garrett said Wednesday the City Council will decide next week whether to undo its October vote to close the beach along the Padre Island seawall to traffic. If the council votes to do so, that will clear the way for a future vote on whether to ban traffic on that same stretch and an additional 3,200 feet. Austin developer Paul Schexnailder has said that much needs to be car-free to make a $500 million resort community feasible.

City Secretary Armando Chapa said voting to undo the previous ban would also void the petition opponents to the ban have been circulating since October. The group - Beach Access Coalition - currently has almost 6,000 of the approximately 8,000 signatures needed to put the ban to a vote, but if the council repeals their current ban and approves a new one, the coalition will have to start a new petition.

John Kelley, a member of the coalition, said if that happens, the group would immediately start a new petition. He added the group also would try to make such an act an issue in the next council election.

"The issue for the council is one of integrity," he said.

In a meeting on the coalition's beliefs, Kelley read from the original ordinance that closed the beach to traffic, which said the council did not intend to close any other beaches in its jurisdiction to traffic and instructed the city manager not to process any requests for vehicle bans by beachfront property owners.

"They made a written promise to the people, and they want to go back on it two months later," said Neil McQueen, chairman of the Coastal Bend chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, one of the groups involved with the coalition. "I can tell you that people are mad now. They feel like they've been betrayed."

Councilman Mark Scott, the only council member who has committed to voting to repeal the original ban, said it's not an issue of going back on a promise, but of correcting a mistake. If the council had known in October that the ban needed to be on 7,400 feet of beach, they would have voted to close all 7,400 feet to traffic then, he said.

"It is politically painful to admit we made a mistake, but it is absolutely the best public policy," Scott said. "I don't think anybody's dishonest. We made an error Let's try to fix it and move on down the road."

Just south of the seawall on Padre Island, a sign indicates the beginning of beach maintenance.