CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Several Nueces County Commissioners have voiced concern that a developer was not charged hundreds of thousands of dollars by the County for planned mitigation work.
Commissioners told 3News that they believe a deal signed off by the county judge has cost county taxpayers around $400,000.
The $400,000 comes in lost revenue that Commissioners Joe A. Gonzalez and Robert Hernandez believe the County should have collected from a developer who was looking to do a 15-acre mitigation project at Padre Balli Park on the Island.
According to a County source, the developer offered to at least do park enhancement projects equaling that amount. The developer was needing to do mitigation work on those acres so he could get his final engineering permit on another property he was working on.
"That’s my understanding, that somebody gave them permission to come onto that land and now, and I also understand they could’ve charged those folks to bring in some kind of revenue to the county," Hernandez said. "And it’s anywhere from $200,000 to $400,000 and that’s money the county could use."
Hernandez and Gonzalez want the issue to go before the entire court and find out exactly what happened.
"This is really a big concern to all of us because all I can say is this was done without the approval of commissioners court," Gonzalez said.
3News asked both commissioners why this issue about the supposed lost revenue hasn’t come out in court before now:
"They have a rule that everything we’re going to talk about, if it’s a contract or a lawyer, it has to go in executive session and only the Judge can bring it out of executive session and decide to talk about it freely," Hernandez said. "So the public can understand what’s going on."
Nueces County Judge Barbara Canales said she will not provide details out of respect for the process. However, she confirmed that no mitigation has occurred. According to Canales, Commissioner Brent Chesney did engage in financial negotiations, but there is no loss of revenue because no mitigation has occurred.
Chesney responded to the County Judge with his own statement:
“Anyone who wants to mitigate on county property should be charged fair market value. I absolutely believe that where the county can legally charge for mitigation( Kleberg property and Newport Pass) we should charge anyone and everyone. The court hired a firm to give us advice on creating a county mitigation bank and what we could charge anyone who wanted to do so in areas appropriate to mitigate. We have a duty to protect our parks and taxpayer dollars”.
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