My wife and I bought property in San Jacinto County in 2008. We moved up here permanently in 2010 from Champion Forest, a very nice neighborhood in northwestern Houston. After moving from an amenity-rich environment to San Jacinto County, we noticed a stark contrast in services and infrastructure.
Our previous neighborhood offered comprehensive municipal services, such as trash collection, smooth concrete roads, fire plugs, sanitary and storm systems, while San Jacinto generally lacks these conveniences. Of course, my taxes were lower here, but I didn’t understand why such conditions continued.
My main issue was what I perceived to be a poorly maintained, nearly impassable road to my house. When I addressed this with my commissioner, he spent two hours showing me the worse condition of other roads, his limited equipment and his road budget, which was eye-opening considering the mileage of roads he is required to maintain. The county numbers are stunning.
Your commissioners need to maintain almost 540 miles of public roads with a total road budget of approximately $6,400,000. Looking further into the numbers:
The county received a federal grant nearly 4 years ago totaling $14,192,000, all dedicated to roads. After removing administrative, land acquisition, and professional costs, $11,256,195 remains for actual road repair and revitalization; the Court decided to split the funds almost evenly among the four precincts (about $2,814,000 for each precinct).
Road repair costs have risen sharply in the past five years. According to the grant spending plan, each mile now costs $887,780 — a staggering figure. Thus, the amount of this grant can only improve about 12.7 miles of county roads. To revitalize all 539.78 miles, the county would need $479,200,000. Not all roads need revitalization, but my guess is that at least 50 percent of them do — still requiring an overwhelming amount of $239,600,000. This amount is far beyond the county annual road budget of $6,400,000 (which is less than 3 percent of what’s needed).
Due to no fault of the Commissioner’s Court, none of that grant money has been spent to date because the wheels of state and federal government are wobbly and turn slowly. Most of this money will not be spent until mid to late 2026 — assuming the federal government does reopen. The main challenge facing the county is insufficient funding, which frustrates both citizens and commissioners, and there are few tools available to the commissioners to get additional money under the present circumstances.
In 2024, the federal government distributed roughly $95 billion in foreign aid and $6.9 Trillion on domestic social spending. Since 1988, the government has spent $8-10 Trillion on Middle East wars, depending on whose numbers you believe. We could have fixed the entire nation’s infrastructure with the war money alone. Meanwhile our country’s infrastructure continues to deteriorate.
You may feel that our current Commissioner’s Court is not managing our money or our infrastructure properly, but after reviewing these figures, hopefully you have a better understanding of some of the problems and frustrations of county management. We must all work together to mitigate the problems in the future. The way to fix this is tough and probably painful, and we are going to need community involvement, reasonable expectations, patience and wise leadership going forward.
