THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE 47 TheCoastalBend.com • The problem with young men and guns. Corpus Christi, along with many of its outlying towns, has a major problem with young men and guns that is getting worse by the year. It has now become routine to see on the news one or more shootings per week, in all parts of the Coastal Bend, with most victims and perpetrators being young men aged 15 to 24. This is generally not gang violence, per se, but is instead a growing culture of youth machismo in which the greatest crime is showing disrespect over any teen-centric topic from girls and cars, to online smack and dirty looks, aka “mean mugging.” While Corpus Christi is blessed with a mostly professional and vigi- lant police department, led by an outstanding chief, they can only do so much on the streets. What we are lacking, as always, is leadership that speaks to the public whenever one of these teen shootings occurs, and who will lead efforts within the schools, supported by the juvenile justice system and law enforce- ment agencies, to intervene as the problem is brewing, rather than only after it's blown out of control. “In 10 years or 20 years, I want to have a complete culture change with [regard] to weapons possession.” Those are the words of the one and only elected official who has had anything to say publicly about our youth gun violence problem—and that is Nuec- es County Juvenile Court Judge Timothy McCoy, spoken on-air to KRIS News upon his founding of a “gun court” program in the county. In most cities, the mayor is the elected leader who goes in front of the cameras to make a statement of con- dolence, action, and hope, when a young person dies violently—or when, for exam- ple, a young police officer, a mom, gets shot in the face by an armed assailant. Not in Corpus Christi. We don't enjoy the privi- lege of leadership that brings a calming or inspirational voice when the citizens need it—and in the face of a doubling of juvenile shootings over the past year, intervention efforts are desperately needed. Judge McCoy should be thanked for doing what he can do within his jurisdiction, but by the time kids make it into his courtroom, they are well on their way to committing, or becoming a victim of, gun violence. Programs across the country have successfully reduced this problem, and it is beyond high time for those efforts to be implemented in the Coastal Bend. A generation of lost souls is the price of continued inaction. • Please fix CCISD before it’s too late. It had been almost a half-century since the Corpus Christi Independent School District opened a new high school, when Veterans Memorial was inaugurated in 2015. For decades, voters turned down one school bond measure after anoth- er, until the floodgates opened in 2010—at which point district planners went to town building, and spending, as much as they could, seemingly as fast as they could, and everywhere they could. In the years since, CCISD has opened some of the most magnificent public school campuses in Texas, offering the most comfort- able, nurturing, and expansive facilities our money could buy—and positioning the district of almost 40,000 students for decades of positive growth. The problem is that now, more than halfway through the 2020's, Corpus Christi's population has fallen by .5% a year, and CCISD's student population has declined by almost 10%, to just around 35,000. While families have moved away, less families have moved into the district, and many parents have taken their kids out of CCISD and to better and safer outlying districts. Add to all of it two FBI raids six years ago and a still- open case, and we must declare that the time has come to fix the CCISD. Judge Timothy McCoy • We need doctors! Medical school(s)? The Coastal Bend is suffering a significant, and almost severe, shortage of doc- tors of almost all disciplines. The Texas A&M system operates a successful nursing program in Corpus Christi, as well as an excellent pharmacy school in Kingsville, but the swelling need is for physicians. Many of our local doctors, plus many who visit on a weekly basis to conduct appointments, were educated at the UT Health Science Center (“UT Health”) in San Antonio, which has grown every year since it was established in 1959. The Texas A&M Medical School is based in Bryan and op- erates programs in Houston, Round Rock, Dallas and elsewhere in the state, but UT and A&M are not the only medical schools in Texas. Baylor, Texas Tech, and the University of Houston also operate highly-respected medical schools that might entertain the idea of a Corpus Christi medical branch, if they are called on to do so. Driscoll Children’s Hospital is one of the country’s most respected pedi- atric medical centers—could it be the catalyst for a pediatric specialty school? Beyond medical doctors, the Coastal Bend is also severely short of veterinarians and dentists. We should dream of attracting all three! Our public schools would improve, along with healthcare access, with three new medical schools. UT Health San Antonio • Let's dream of saving the North Side. For generations of Corpus Christians, the center of activity and influence was the city's north side, that being the Leopard Street corridor that leads to the Uptown section of downtown, where office skyscrapers emerged over the last half of the last century. The Hillcrest neighborhood is the only surviving residential section on the north side of IH-37 and is the city's only majority-Black neighborhood, which has been decimated over the past 30 years. As crime increased and city services declined, residents started to sell their properties to the refiners and associated interests and headed for the south side and other parts of town. The new Har- bor Bridge bifurcated Hillcrest, displacing more property owners, and the plan to build the City's Inner Harbor water desalination plant will surely wipe out what little is left—almost 700 households occupied Hillcrest two decades ago, a number that has declined to less than 200 today. If the plant is built at a better location, and the federal opportunity zone is extended to the area, Hillcrest could be brought back. San Antonio's Pearl Brewery development is a model that could thrive on the Uptown Bluff of downtown Corpus Christi, where less than half of office skyscrapers are game- fully occupied. The Ed Rachal Foun- dation and entrepreneur Lynn Frazier have invested generously in the area, but only a major project could return life to this once-vibrant section of town. A Dream for Hillcrest The Chamberlain on the Uptown Bluff
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