Spring break: South Padre Island goes wild.
South Padre might get a bit of relief on spring break
By the time the cars full of college students from Texas and sunstarved Northern states start backing up the Queen Isabella Memorial Causeway, South Padre Island resident and teacher Shane Wilson is far away.
“Due to the past debacle of spring break over the years, we have left,” he said, as he and his wife got on the road from a visit to San Antonio and headed south for a few nights in McAllen.
While away, they donate their home as temporary housing for some of South Padre Island’s expanded Spring Break police force.
The city’s roughly 2,800 year-round population has in recent years swelled by more than 50,000 during the month of March.
While spring break generates millions in gross sales and tax revenue, the influx of beer-guzzling young people can be both taxing to locals and dangerous to the carousers.
In 2017, there were three deaths during “Texas Week,” the second week of March and typically when most Texas colleges and universities break from studies.
Police logs for March and April 2017 showed 762 responses for misdemeanors and higher level offenses. There were no fatalities in 2018 and police responses had dropped a bit to 738.
There have been some changes since then. City officials now conduct an extensive debriefing of what worked and what could have been done better. There were 47 police officers from neigh-
boring jurisdictions hired to work part-time in 2018, compared with 18 the year before. There’s now a team monitoring social media outlets to try to get ahead of pop-up parties.
“Those folks that live there, the residents, they’re in a high-traffic area, their yard gets used as a toilet,” Wilson said. “The police have done a real good job of squelching the big parties.”
Wilson headed up a group called “Property Owners Who Care” and compiled 500 signatures on a “Save our Island” petition seeking an ordinance to help control crowds.
The ordinance they sought would have had event promoters rather than the city pay for additional security and require venue owners to post a bond before the city issues a permit if a highprofile act “has been previously shown to attract attendees other than college students (specifically those with criminal records, or individuals associated with acts of violence, the trafficking of drugs, etc.).”
Clayton Brashear, owner of Clayton’s Beach Bar and Grill — billed as the largest beach bar in Texas — fought back with a “Safe Spring Break” petition, which put the focus on having a police force better equipped to enforce existing ordinances and conducting a crackdown on house parties disturbing residential neighborhoods. That petition drew 1,500 signatures.
In the end, city officials in July 2017 approved a “large event ordinance” requiring promoters of events aimed at attracting more than 1,000 people apply for the permit at least four weeks in advance and submit plans for aspects such as security, first aid and emergency medical services, required water stations and litter control.
This year brought a big change. The University of Texas at Austin and Texas State University both scheduled Spring Breaks the third week of March instead of the second.
It meant some Texas fans of hip hop stars Cardy B and Rich the Kid missed out on Wednesday’s headline acts at Rockstar Beach.
According to Buddy Young, coordinator since 1980 of a church ministry called Beach Reach, the concert put his hundreds of university student volunteers to work. Cardi B showed up about an hour and a half late, a long time for the throngs who had been drinking all day.
Night brought the Eli Young Band and a second round of craziness, he said.
Young, director of the Baptist Student Ministry at West Texas A&M University, flew home Friday for a few days before returning to South Padre for the second wave of Spring Breakers and the second convoy of church buses full of volunteers to give rides, serve up post-bar pancakes and talk about the gospel.
Beach Reach last week had 550 volunteers give rides to 11,500 people and feed 7,500 people. There will be another crew of 250 next week.
“The Spring Breaks in Texas are evenly split in Texas,” he said. “And so the schools that are available to go the second week, that’s what we’re doing.”
Israel Mendez, director of the Baptist Student Ministry at the University of Texas at San Antonio and director of a group of about 20 students from the University of Texas at San Antonio and Baptist University of the Americas, said the week was a yearly highlight for both him and the student volunteers.
“For me it’s one of the things that excites me most for the year,” he said. “Even though it’s a week of not sleeping.”
Wilson, the South Padre Island resident, said the split Texas weeks could mean crowds are a bit more controllable and the key money making gets spread out a second week. Data on hotel occupancy, mixed drink and sales taxes won’t be out until the summer.