Chili's

Well, the latest local victim of the George Bush administration is the new Chili’s restaurant in Port Isabel. Hell isn’t everything George Bush’s fault?

Opened for a little over a year, I understand from insiders that their operating costs are around 30K / month, and their gross doesn’t generally exceed 18K / month, a rather large discrepancy.

However

Informed sources also state that a major chunk of the 30K / month operating cost is property lease and City taxes.

Nothing new here.

The City of Port Isabel has long been recognized for it’s arbitrary and confiscatory tax rates. Hell, the residents of the eastern part of the Fingers area pay something like 23 dollars a square foot, residential tax rates, while their neighbors right across the road, on the western part of the fingers pay about three and a half backs a square foot, and over at Port of Call the rate is eleven dollars. All of these areas are of contemporaneous property value, all waterfront, so these rates are puzzling to a number of the residents of the eastern Fingers who rightly feel that there’s just no rhyme or reason. Could it be because certain members of the City Commission hold land in select low tax rate areas? Nothing new here either….in fact politics as usual in the third world-third coast.

It is an area that would cut off it’s proverbial nose to spite it’s rather dumb face.
In the case of Chili’s, would it not be better for members of the City Commission, the esteemed mayor, Joe Verga to try and negotiate, perhaps even show up, hats in hand to see what can be done to try and encourage business to remain in this economically distressed area? Some income is certainly better than none.

But apparently a Machismo-Machiavellian attitude prevails, blinding these folks with visions of enrichment.

That is why Port Isabel has been, and always will be a second class city.