12/30/2022
To the Citizens of East Montgomery County:
Thank you! Throughout these past 20 years you have given me your support, your trust, your faith, and your hopes. You have answered my call whenever I needed your assistance to support a cause I believed in, whether it was school supplies for our children, pet food for our animal shelter, or water for our first responders. Through your support, I was able to provide scholarships for area students, and equipment for local youth sports. I am appreciative for all you have done for me, and feel truly blessed.
When first elected, I could not have imagined the past two decades. They have been amazing! I leave office forever grateful for, and humbled by the opportunity to serve my community for so long. Together, we faced many unprecedented and challenging periods, including the global pandemic and multiple major flooding events.
I dealt with both the positives and negatives of the sudden and massive commercial and residential growth that transformed our area, and tried to adjust to our changing world, while retaining the values that built and sustained East Montgomery County. I worked hard for you, to build our community into a place we could all be proud of – a place where our children could feel safe and would want to one day raise families.
As your Justice of the Peace, I worked closely with our schools to increase attendance, so our students would receive the best available education. I worked with law enforcement, when necessary, to hold parents accountable, and implement effective methods of keeping students in school and encourage them to work toward a brighter future. Over the years, I saw many lives positively impacted. I will forever cherish the letters and kind words from former students and their family members, expressing their gratitude for the interest my staff and I took in them when they strayed off-course. I worked with multiple law enforcement agencies to make our community accountable and safe, pouring over the details presented in every case and prayerfully seeking to always provide a just verdict.
I am especially proud of all I was able to accomplish in the four years as your Commissioner, and I’m proud to have provided unprecedented transparency in the process. Having grown up in a time when East Montgomery County was not always viewed or treated fairly, I worked with other elected officials to ensure our community received necessary resources, and consideration.
My work crews tirelessly attacked our drainage mitigation issues all over the precinct. We have drained areas that have never been drained before, and our roadside ditches are in better condition than they have ever been. We have worked on mobility projects on Ipes Road, Gene Campbell Boulevard, Old Highway 105, and Community Drive, to name a few. We repaired or rebuilt multiple bridges. Upon inspection, we found many bridges and the ground beneath them were eroding from the underside, creating a potential hazard not visible to drivers.
We assisted local fire departments with heavy equipment on multiple occasions when homes and businesses were threatened by wildfires due to the drought. We also dealt with the extreme opposite problem. On two occasions, when heavy rains dumped unprecedented amounts of water, flooding southeast Texas, my staff coordinated with the Red Cross to provide a shelter for those forced to evacuate their homes.
We installed a Splash Pad at Bull Sallas Park in New Caney, providing a safe, clean and free water park style area for families during the brutal Texas summers. While that addition was quite popular, it was not the only relief we assisted in providing. I’m proud to have been instrumental in creating a local DMV office in the EMC Annex in New Caney, drastically improving convenience and waiting time for local residents who previously had to drive to the crowded Conroe DMV, or to another county. We also eased the crowded conditions and limited parking for early voting by facilitating it at Bull Sallas Park instead of the EMC Annex where it was previously offered.
We created a beautiful, much-needed, new softball field at Ipes Road Sports Complex in Splendora, with all the amenities of the existing fields. Our Parks Department worked tirelessly to update and improve all our parks and facilities, sometimes assisted by road crews when larger equipment was required. One such improvement was the newly paved parking area added south of the Show Barn at Bull Sallas Park, where there was a long history of vehicles getting stuck during the annual EMC Fair and Rodeo. Fenced parking was also added adjacent to the basketball court.
When the pandemic indefinitely halted the popularly supported jail trustee trash collection program, we created the Pct. 4 Clean Roadsides Crew, through our Parks Department. They not only removed standard litter and debris from the shoulders and ditches of county-maintained roads, they cleaned up large illegal dumpsites, sometimes in conjunction with a Gradall crew for the removal of larger, heavier items. We worked with the Pct. 4 Constable’s Office to identify parties responsible for illegal dumping and hold them accountable with citations, taken very seriously in Judge Dunn’s Court.
I have always considered our EMC Seniors a priority, and we improved services for them, adding and updating facilities and equipment. We acquired two buses for senior outings, such as an Astros game, Zoo Lights at the Houston Zoo, and the Montgomery County Fair. We planned to facilitate many more opportunities, but the pandemic halted everything for a long while, and still impacts events and individual decisions.
Senior Bingo is the most frequent and popular activity at the EMC Senior Center, and the pandemic halted that too, at first. Knowing the activity’s importance to our seniors, my staff worked together to create “Car Bingo”, played with seniors safely inside their parked vehicles, not violating CDC guidelines then in place.
I am appreciative of the dedication and hard work of the work crews and staff I was fortunate to work alongside, and I sincerely thank each and every one. They toil in service for you and make a difference in our community, which was the inspiration for (our social media hashtag).
I am forever grateful to all who provided counsel, assistance, or prayer in times of crisis. We faced many new and unexpected challenges, and I’m proud of how our community members worked together to survive them, recover from them, and learn from them.
As I place my time as a public servant in my rear-view mirror, I am honored to have served you, my friends and family. It was for you, and because of you I gave my all, and I will look back on this as time well-spent where I was able to make a difference.
I wish you all the joy and happiness you deserve. May God bless you and yours.
Commissioner James Metts
