Corpus Christi’s Cost of Indecision

So last Tuesday, June 2nd, was one of the strangest days in Corpus Christi civic history.

In one building, a 15-hour council meeting on a billion-dollar desalination plant with more than 100 residents signed up to speak.

In a courtroom, a pretrial hearing on whether to remove the city's mayor from office, and on the books, new policies preparing for emergency water restrictions for every resident.

Now, let's start with the water.

Corpus Christi is staring down a drought that has it on course to become one of the first major U.S. cities to run short of water, possibly next year.

The proposed fix is the Inner Harbor Desalination Plant, 30 million gallons of drinking water a day, drought or no drought, and it's fully permitted, 60% designed, and contractors are lined up.

But the council killed it last September in a vote of five to four over costs about ... concerns about costs.

Nine months later, the same council, deeper drought, came back, and at 2:20 in the morning, Wednesday, after a public comment period that ran past six hours, the council voted seven to two to punt the decision to September 1st.

Now, the only two votes against this delay, the mayor, Paulette Guajardo, and Councilman Rolling Barrera, and the plant was approved in 2019 at 160 million.

When council killed it in September, it was 1.2 billion.

The new price is $978.8 million, and the contract that was on the table last week was for $78 million just for the design and demonstration.

The state has committed millions in loans, 222 million more in 2020, and over half billion on top of that.

Now, the Monday before the vote, Fitch downgraded the city's water utility from double A minus to A minus.

Their words, they said that this downgrade reflects weaker governance during a time of elevated risk.

A regency, a- agency just downgraded the city because of the city's inability to make a decision, so what do they do? They fail to make a decision.