Bruce Rieser, board member of The Woodlands Township
Bruce Rieser serves many roles in The Woodlands Township. The 28year resident of the township was first elected to the township’s Board of Directors in 2016 and is one of seven members of the board who help guide the township. Rieser is also a member of the township’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, also known as Visit The Woodlands Texas, and is the chairman of the Drainage Task Force, which was created after the Tax Day and Memorial Day flooding of 2016. The task force has taken on renewed importance not many could have imagined in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, which dumped more than 50 inches of rain on the Houston region and caused severe flood damage to more than 330 homes in the Village of Creekside Park, Timarron and Timarron Lakes. Rieser hails from Ohio, growing up in Columbus and later the suburb of Westerville. After
graduating from Ohio State, he embarked on a career journey that included stops in New York, Pittsburgh and Chicago before he landed in The Woodlands. He lives in the township with his wife, Sarah, and the couple has one daughter, Katelin—a student at the University of Houston. QUESTION: How did you end up on the Woodlands?
Rieser: “Work. British Airways transferred me down here in 1989. (My wife) And I thought this would be three to five years and then we’d go back to Chicago, where we’d met and married. After about seven years, the offer did come to go back to Chicago. And, we decided we wanted to stay— so, I turned down a promotion to stay here. I ended up working for (British Airways) until 2010. I retired in 2010, when I retired I was director of property for the Americas. I was in charge of all our corporate real estate. Now, I’ve formed my own consulting firm. Now I’m working with the airport authority and the foreign carriers to try to build a new building. We moved to The Woodlands originally in 1989, came here with our one-year-old daughter. This was like Disney Land back then. If you’ve ever driven around Disney World, even before Epcot or around the time of Epcot, you could drive the property... you pretty much were allowed to drive everywhere. It was real easy to get lost—no signage—well, The Woodlands was like that. You just couldn’t imagine all this stuff was tucked in behind (woods). At that point, you didn’t have Town Center, you didn’t have the mall. You had to go down to (FM) 1960 for just about anything you needed. There were only a couple of restaurants. There were only 23,000 people.”
QUESTION: What do you like about the community in The Woodlands?
RIESER: We love the fact that, well Texans are a really friendly bunch. We had great neighbors on our street. We loved what we were able buy in terms of the cost of living—after living in Chicago, New York and Pittsburgh, this was like kind of dying and going to heaven. We’d only been in Pittsburgh about a year when my boss came to me and said we need someone to go down to Houston. Within the space of two years, we went from a little bitty 1,800 (square) foot house in New Rochelle, New York, to a 3,000 square foot, one story house on 1/4 of an acre lot in The Woodlands for about $90,000 less that our house cost in New York. I’m a golfer, and any idea of being able to play golf year round was appealing.
It’s a great place, we’ve grown with it. We’ve grown with some of the issues that people started complaining about, such as traffic and it was getting too big. This is the way it was always planned to be. If you came into the Woodlands home office, you’d walk in and see this huge topographic map in the home finder’s (office) that showed all of this with the exception of Creekside. In any case, it was always envisioned to be like this, to be a little city. We love the church, we love the fact that now, we don’t have to go anyplace else. It’s all here everything—including great hospitals, our academic environment is getting better and better each year.
QUESTION: You were first elected in 2016 to the Board of Directors, along with several other new board members. Why did you seek office?
RIESER: I was just elected (in 2016), this is coming up on a year and a half. I’ve only been on the board—this is my first term. I came on with Gordy (Bunch) and John (Anthony Brown). I helped a couple of other people in terms of their elected efforts, and I had been really urged to run for public office for a long time and just didn’t have the time to do it. When we went through the issue of road bond back in 2016, when the people in tour community basically said not only no, but hell no, and have the county judge come out after the vote and say we’re going to build it anyway,
that was my wake up call. I said, for years, I said someone needs to do something and I woke up one morning and realized I was that somebody. It was really that (moment). Gordy (Bunch) had been talking to me about running that year. I kind of pushed him off and pushed him off and pushed him off. (My wife and I) were at our summer home in Michigan and sitting out on our deck. One of the major reasons I didn’t run for public office before was my wife was dead set against it. We were sitting on the deck in Michigan and I was talking to her about it and I was expecting her to tell me no. She looks at me and says, ‘I think you should run.’ I said ‘Wow, where did that come from?’ She said, ‘Bruce, The Woodlands is our home. Frankly, we need people to guide us through this “next season” of The Woodlands. I think you should run.’ I’ve really enjoyed my time on the board and have definitely jumped in feet first. It’s been a pretty whirlwind 15 months.
QUESTION: You’re on the Drainage Task Force, which was created after the Tax Day floods of 2016. But that has taken a new turn with Hurricane Harvey—how has the task force goals or responsibilities changed?
RIESER: That task force was never envisioned to be a long-term deal. (Township president) Don Norrell and I were talking about this, and he was actually suggesting we disband it. I looked at him and said, ‘Don, I don’t think so.’ We were one bad rain event from another event. The reason why the task force is valuable is it gets everybody that is involved in drainage issues (together). We’re now up to like 35 sitting members of the task force—from the U.S. Geological Service, the National Weather Service, the San Jacinto River Authority, the MUDs. It’s kind of turned into a regional deal. The Harris County Flood Control District is involved, the county engineer is involved. At some point, we’re talking about asking Grimes and Waller (counties) to send somebody. Spring Creek extends all the way out into Grimes County, 200 some odd miles of uncontrolled watershed. The township doesn’t actually have any drainage responsibilities, per se, it’s the MUDs, the San Jacinto River Authority, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers .... the list goes on and on. It’s absolutely amazing to have everyone in the same room and to hear the same story, and to share what resources are available and how to go get them is very valuable. Especially after Harvey when people were pretty emotional about what happened. We took the full force of that along with (MUD) 386. I think we’ve proven to people that we’re serious about trying to find a solution and the only way we’re going to find it is to basically work together.
QUESTION: You mentioned that several elected officials are also involved in helping with the flooding mitigation efforts; how important are state and national elected officials in relation to the water issues facing Texas—whether it be flooding or drinking water?
RIESER: I’ve been talking to (state Rep.) Brandon (Creighton) and at some point, the state of Texas has to get serious about water. Behind oil, water is probably the second most important factor and at some times a limiting factor in being able to continue to sustain the economic growth model that Texas has enjoyed for so long. I’d love to see the state appoint somebody to be, to have water be their sole responsibility: a water czar. It shouldn’t just be storm water. It should be the ground water. It should be the surface water. All these decisions that we make overlap.
So, what really is good for ground water may be bad for surface water. Doing stuff for storm water may be bad for surface water development. They’re all tied together—you can’t take them and pull them apart. The other thing I’d love to see the state do—we’ve done a myriad of studies looking at the hydrologic side of these watersheds. I think the state legislature should get involved in setting minimum standards for watersheds in the state, because they cross so many jurisdictions. To try to get everyone clued in with an inter-local agreement is so hard to do. Obviously everyone has different circumstances based on where they live on these watersheds. I think the state just needs to step in and say, we need to enforce some stricter standards along these watersheds so we don’t have the catastrophic water events, short of building a bunch of reservoirs, which is really tough to do. It sounds simple on the surface, but it’s not. Everyone just has their own limited view of the problem and somebody needs to look at it from 30,000 feet.