Tom Whitehurst

Sunday, November 12, 2000

Now that the city election is over and it's time to move forward, what happens to Forward Corpus Christi?
   If you live in Corpus Christi, surely you have come into contact with Forward Corpus Christi. If you're a member of a civic group or club, or even if you go out to nightclubs, chances are that Forward Corpus Christi members have talked to you or tried to register you to vote. If not, they knocked on your door. If you weren't there, they left a flier on your door. There was no escaping them.
   They organized shortly before the city made its bond and sales tax proposals and spent the past several months pushing for their passage. The 450 to 500 members of Forward Corpus Christi, their friends and friends of their friends churned up a strong momentum going into the election, and they rightfully could claim much credit for the overwhelming passage of five of the six proposals, including the marquee multipurpose arena.
   A hard sell
   The only one that didn't pass, the economic development sales tax, lost by 202 votes out of nearly 80,000. And that three-tenths-percent margin is a victory of sorts, considering that the economic development tax was the hardest one to sell, with a history of voter suspicion. Ten years ago, a proposed sales tax for economic development failed 81 percent to 19 percent.
   I met a few members of Forward Corpus Christi before they actually became Forward Corpus Christi, and I couldn't help but perceive a sense of impatience among them.
   "I think 'not satisfied' would be a better description," said Woody Riley, a Forward Corpus Christi member. "Just not satisfied with the current rate of growth of our city."
   The force was with them
   Whatever it's called, it was a force of energy, bottled carefully like Granny Clampett's "rheumatiz" medicine, and wielded with precision, like the staff that Charlton Heston let loose on Yul Brynner to persuade him to let Charlton's people go.
   Only it wasn't a force of retribution, like the staff of Moses. It was upbeat. I remember driving down Baldwin Boulevard a few Saturdays ago and seeing Manuel Ugues, president and CEO of the Corpus Christi Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, walking along Baldwin with a handful of fliers.
   Ugues counts himself among Forward Corpus Christi's members and, like several of them, is also a member of the Young Professionals Club.
   Those young faces are what made this campaign different from the ones rejected by voters in the recent past - the 1990 debacle, the 1997 Community Progress Partnership package of 35 projects that would have been funded by a sales tax, and Nueces County's bond package of four big projects last year.
   "What was unusual about this campaign, from what I saw, was it was a mixture of the old guard and a new, energetic breed of activists," said Councilman Mark Scott, who had been at the forefront of Vision 2000, a grassroots community planning exercise that begat the Community Progress Partnership. "It wasn't the same old people. They were tireless in their efforts and obviously it paid off.
   "It was ethnically diverse. It was gender diverse. It was socio-economically diverse. It was a very diverse group of people working on the campaign."
   But now the campaign is over. So, what now? First, there will be some Follow-Through Corpus Christi, as in monitoring the city government's efforts to complete the projects. Nobody wants a repeat of the 1986 city bond issue that took 14 years to finish, and might never have been completed had city officials not decided more than a year ago that they needed to rehabilitate their credibility.
   "All of us who volunteered our time and our resources are interested in being sure that the things we said would get done, actually happen," said Sam Beecroft, a member of Forward Corpus Christi.
   Members will regroup this week to prepare for this watchdog role. They also foresee an active role in other community issues, though they haven't chosen any as of yet.
   "The purpose of our group originally was to bring the citizens of Corpus Christi together," said David Engel, the group's chairman and, at age 49, one of its oldsters. "And our goal was to help the economy, create jobs and make the city a better place for everyone to live. And we felt that supporting the six proposals would accomplish that goal."
   But it doesn't end there.
   "You've got a new beginning going on in this city," Engel said. "We have a new beginning in terms of new leaders, new energy and new creativity, people doing it for the right purpose. They're not doing it because they're going to benefit personally. They're doing it because the city is going to benefit."
  
  

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