Garcia To Testify On Post NAVSTA Ingleside Vision

[Press Release from Juan Garcia (D-Corpus Christi), Candidate for Texas House, District 32]

Testifying before a local hearing of the State Subcommittee on BRAC tomorrow morning, Texas State House candidate Juan Garcia will lay out a sweeping plan for maximizing the assets in place at Naval Station Ingleside, calling for putting a medical school on the site of the soon-to-be-closed base.

Garcia’s vision also includes using the physician faculty of such an institution to man the dramatically underutilized hospital facility at NAS Corpus Christi, creating a long-called for VA Hospital south of San Antonio.

Subcommittee Chairman Senator Eliot Shapleigh of El Paso, a longtime advocate for improving health care in medically underserved portions of the state, said he appreciated Garcia’s proposal.

“Juan has been the first to offer a fully-formed vision for the Coastal Bend after Ingleside closes,” Shapleigh said.

Opening his testimony by describing the need for a medical school south of San Antonio (the only professional school in South Texas is the newly-opened Irma Rangel School of Pharmacy in Kingsville), Garcia will point out the irony of the BRAC Commission’s decision to close down Naval Station Ingleside, given that the base is home to the newest facilities in the Fleet. Visitors are met by a beautiful Administration Headquarters complex.  Sailors live in attractive, well-kept barracks that resemble college dormitories, surrounded by recreational and athletic facilities.  The Navy invested millions laying state-of-the-art broadband fiber-optic lines in this rural area, and the facility has a cutting-edge Video Teleconferencing Center.  The Navy College Program, which provides off-hours educational opportunities to sailors, hosts university instructors who teach in modern classrooms, including a chemistry/science lab.  A working medical clinic provides health services for military members and their dependents.  Garcia’s testimony states, “The base looks remarkably like a college campus.  It looks like a medical school.  Rather than wait for a decade of new construction elsewhere and millions in taxpayer costs, when that last minesweeper sails out of the Bay on September 30, 2010, we could literally change the sign on the gate from ‘Naval Station Ingleside’, to the ‘Texas A&M Medical School on the Coastal Bend’, and be ready to start class.”

The Texas A&M College of Medicine at Temple, which trains medical students during their 3rd and 4th years, has a faculty of 306 people.  A full-fledged, four-year medical school would bring thousands of medical professionals, researchers, and students to the area.  In addition, medical facilities could draw additional focused federal grants to support new projects, centers, and research efforts.  A new medical school and research center would provide the incentive for biomedical and biotechnology companies to invest in the Coastal Bend medical community. Proposed Garcia, “Imagine the impact that a faculty of physicians and medical students would bring to the historically medically under-served communities of Ingleside and San Patricio County.  To the tax base. To the realtor and builder industries as they bought and built new homes.  To small business opportunities from the ripple effect generated.  It would change the landscape of the Coastal Bend, both figuratively and literally.”

“Many of these students and professionals will end up making South Texas their permanent home, coming to appreciate it’s natural beauty and access, purchasing homes, establishing practices, and falling in love … just as my mother-in-law hoped her daughter would marry a doctor,” joked Garcia.

The second part of Garcia’s plan focuses on the fact that there is no VA Hospital south of Audie Murphy in San Antonio.  Despite the rich history of military service in South Texas (Nueces County has a veteran’s population of 31,850, and Hidalgo County has another 25,013), a veteran seeking an appointment at a VA hospital who lives in Cameron County must make a 5 1/2 hour journey.  Said Garcia, “Demographers tell us we lose 1,000 WWII veterans a day across the nation. Many of our veterans are elderly and need medical care.  These veterans were promised medical care for their service, and they deserve better.”

Garcia believes creating a medical school in the Coastal Bend will address this.  “The hospital aboard NAS Corpus Christi stands 6 stories, but is so underutilized due to budget and personnel cuts, that it has been downgraded from a hospital to a clinic, and plans call for it to be vacated. That building should be the ‘VA Hospital of South Texas.’  We would staff it with the teaching faculty and the residents from the medical school (a quick ferryboat ride across the Bay), and the nurses/nurse practitioners from the nursing school at TAMU-CC, which sits just outside the back gate of NAS.  Without any new significant construction or delay, we could provide the medical care earned by the huge veterans population in Nueces and the surrounding counties, and cut the commute time for Valley veterans in half.”

Garcia was clear to state that this should not be the exclusive use of the Naval Station complex.   “With over 1,000 acres on the Ingleside land mass, there is room for multiple uses of that area.  For example, it would be foolish not to utilize that unique deep-draft port.  Experts on wind energy will tell you that the Ingleside Peninsula, because of its geography and its steady directional winds for 300 days out of the year, is the “Holy Grail” of their industry.  There’s room for additional industry, an ocean liner port, retail, whatever the community decides. But let’s not tear down those base buildings and start over.  Let’s not wait a decade and spend millions of dollars building a medical school facility from scratch somewhere down in the Valley.  We need a new, bold, and daring vision for our future.  ‘Texas A&M Medical School on the Coastal Bend.’ This can transform our community.