Frequently Asked Questions

As our tagline indicates, Developing Our Future: Corpus Christi is a project for planning growth in a more intentional and sustainable manner. We want to guide development with master plans that indicate where and when growth can occur throughout the city and create a fee structure that effectively funds it. We’re making efforts to engage with stakeholders and collect community input to provide to City Council to vote on whether to adopt the proposed plans and fees that assure growth pays its fair share.

Historically, development in Corpus Christi has not occurred in a comprehensively planned manner and has impaired the city’s services and ability to reach its fullest potential. Creating master plans for services like water, wastewater, storm water, and roadways will help the city by directing where and when growth can occur and how to best fund it.

Expanding essential services such as roadways, storm water, water and wastewater are instrumental in making the City of Corpus Christi a great place to live, work, and play. Having plans in place and adjusting the way the city collects development fees ensures we can maintain the expected level of service for all residents and businesses. We want all current and future residents to have safe, reliable water, wastewater, and transportation infrastructure.

The city has a Master Plan for growth called Plan CC, which provides direction to the community and staff, but the plan is not enforceable. The city also has a Water Master Plan, which needs to be updated; a draft Storm Water Plan that needs to be completed; and a Mobility Plan that covers bicycling and pedestrian mobility, but not roads for vehicle travel. The utility master plans being developed within this project will help us plan the utility needs for water, wastewater, storm water, and roadways for the next 10 years. These plans will be based on our land use assumptions and will assure that development during that time follows an efficient and intentional path.

Any individual that plats a piece of property in Corpus Christi, large or small, or who requests a residential water meter, pays a fee into the city’s Trust Funds which will be used to expand water and wastewater utilities. The expansion of other infrastructure, such as roadways and storm water utilities, is funded by utility rate payers and taxpayers. With an Impact Fee, the developer would pay their fair share of the cost of connecting new infrastructure to existing infrastructure.

Impact fees are one-time fees charged to developers to cover the costs associated with bringing utility infrastructure to the edge of the new development. Impact fees are a common approach for infrastructure funding in Texas and the U.S. However, since 1982 in Corpus Christi, anyone who plats a piece of property has paid a fee that is held in a Trust Fund that is reimbursed for extending water and wastewater infrastructure to new developments. These fees did not cover all infrastructure expansions. With an Impact Fee, the developer won’t be contributing to a Trust Fund to be reimbursed by the city, instead, the developer will absorb these fees as the cost of doing business or recoup them in sales to the buyer.