Needles in the pines: Campaign in The Woodlands turning ugly
This is surely not what George P. Mitchell had in mind when he created The Woodlands in the early 1970s.
Mitchell, the oil executive, developer and philanthropist who died in 2013 at age 94, lived long enough to see the population of his beloved master-planned community pass the 100,000 mark. He saw the inevitable consequences of that growth, including the political spats that would intrude on its pastoral serenity. But Mitchell likely never imagined that the closing weeks of a campaign for The Woodlands Township board would devolve into a cacophony replete with allegations of powergrabbing, fear-mongering and score-settling.
Amid brisk early voting in the run-up to the Nov. 8 election, residents of The Woodlands are struggling to sift through a torrent of contradictory messages — social media posts, door-hangers, robocalls, you name it — regarding the potential consequences of incorporation, the election’s main issue. The tone of the discussion is unfortunate because the governance question is worthy of sober analysis outside of the overheated framework of small-town politics.
As my colleague Bridget Balch reported last week, the messages are the work of groups backing competing slates of candidates for four spots on the seven-member township board: The Woodlands Concerned Taxpayers, a nonprofit led by former board chairman Bruce Tough, and Residents’ Advocates, a group organized last year to oppose a controversial plan to extend Woodlands Parkway. Tough’s support of a bond proposal that included the parkway project was seen as a key reason he lost his board seat.
On its website and elsewhere, Tough’s organization warns of ruinous, “immediate” tax increases if candidates pushing for quick incorporation of The Woodlands have their way. Township board member Gordy Bunch, one of the candidates targeted for defeat by The Wood-
lands Concerned Taxpayers, says Tough and his allies are trying to frighten voters by warning of cataclysmic tax increases based on fanciful scenarios.
Here’s a sample line from the “Concerned Taxpayers” website: “The 2016 presidential race is important to our country’s future, but opposing a 70% immediate increase in our local tax rate may be more important to our local quality of life.”
I suggested to Tough by phone on Monday that this language was misleading, since the quickest conceivable scenario would require action next year by the state Legislature — not known for moving swiftly on contentious local issues — followed by a referendum on the incorporation question. This line of inquiry was not fruitful; we ended up discussing our interpretations of the word “immediate.” (The 70 percent figure came from one of several studies of the costs of incorporation, which yielded differing results.)
The township model, created a decade ago, was not part of Mitchell’s original vision; he expected The Woodlands, in the fullness of time, to become part of Houston. But according to Roger Galatas, one of Mitchell’s colleagues in the early days, Mitchell’s views evolved in the 1990s when he saw the fierce negative reaction to Houston’s annexation of Kingwood.
The township is a sort of quasi-city that collects taxes and provides some services, such as enforcing deed restrictions — an essential part of The Woodlands’ character — and maintaining parks and greenbelts. It contracts with Montgomery County for law enforcement, but the county picks up the tab for other functions, such as road maintenance, that would become a local responsibility if The Woodlands became a real city.
As an outsider, I’d be interested in an independent analysis of whether this arrangement is equitable for other Montgomery County taxpayers. But that’s not what people are talking about; instead, says township board member Mike Bass, everyone is obsessed with incorporation.
“This should not even have been an issue,” says Bass, who was endorsed by the Concerned Taxpayers group but says he asked that his photo be removed from its literature because he didn’t think the 70 percent tax-increase figure was necessarily correct. “There are other things we need to deal with in the short term that are much more important, like staying ahead of the growth and holding crime down.”
Perhaps voters in The Woodlands should ask themselves this question as they enter the booth: Which candidates would work most effectively to realize George Mitchell’s vision of a livable, equitable, sustainable community? They’re not likely to find the answer in the brochure hanging from their doorknob.
mike.snyder@chron.com twitter.com/chronsnyder