December 2009

Thinking Back and Looking Ahead

Filed under Newsletters

The year 2009 will stand as a historically significant year in the life of our community.  As I pause to reflect on the accomplishments of the past year, I find one thought echoing over and over in my mind, “Did we really do it?”  Did we really succeed where others before us have failed?  Did we finally manage to succeed where other equally able people, who worked as hard as we worked, failed to succeed?  These thoughts just keep bouncing around in my head, over and over. And each time I ask myself some variant of this question, I get the same answer.  Yes!  Yes! And Yes!  We did succeed.  We did manage to accomplish what has been attempted on several occasions over the past 30 years.  Yes!  We did it.  Then I hear the questions one more time.  “Did we…”I realize that many reading this message will not appreciate the magnitude of this accomplishment.  Some will surely not even know what this guy is babbling about.  So let me take a minute to bring everyone up to speed and, hopefully, help you appreciate what “we” accomplished this year.

To begin with, like some of you, I am a long-time resident of the Mission Bend-Clayton neighborhood.  My wife and I moved here in 1978, and have been here ever since.  Like many of you, we have noticed many changes occurring in this area over the past 30 years.  Sadly, many of these changes are not for the better.  All neighborhoods seem to decline in many ways as they grow older, and Mission Bend and Clayton are certainly not exceptions.  I won’t devote too much time detailing those changes.  Just drive around the area and you will see them for yourself.

The one issue that seems to grab everyone’s attention is crime.  As neighborhoods grow older, they are at risk for having an increased crime rate and I am afraid that our area is not an exception.  Many of the middle-class families, who originally settled this area, have left.

We all know the story:  “Gone to Katy.”  Many of the single-family homes in our area are now, practically speaking, multifamily dwellings.  Just count the cars parked in the driveway and on the curb in front of so many homes.  Many homes that were privately owned, are now rental property.  Some of these property owners are responsible people who work to monitor their renters and to maintain their properties.  Sadly, many do not make this effort, and we all suffer. 

Commercial interests are moving into our neighborhood, which bring blight to our area and we are helpless to stop or to control them.  And the list goes on.  Maybe the thought of urban blight is something you would rather not consider.   Some of our neighbors have already considered these challenges and have opted to sell their homes and move to other, newer neighborhoods.  However, many were shocked to find that relocation did not help them escape this problem.  When they put their homes on the market, they found that the value they had assumed for their home was in fact not realistic.  One friend, who decided to move, finally sold his home for $30,000 less than the appraised value on which he had been paying taxes.  I call that “the high cost of education.”

I share this information as background to tell you that many in this area made a decision to do something besides complain.  We banded together and we organized.  We organized the homeowners associations in the Mission Bend and Clayton areas.  To our surprise and delight our neighbors in the Kingsbridge area also joined our crusade.  We formed a council of 13 homeowners associations, which collectively represent around 25,000 people spread over two counties.  We called this organization the Greater Mission Bend Area Council, which of course we abbreviate to GMBAC.  Our efforts drew media attention and we were featured in several stories in the Houston Chronicle.  And Channel 13 took notice of our work and did a special which shared our story with the entire city.

And public officials took notice of our efforts.  Recently we had the county judges from both Harris County and Fort Bend County come and speak to our members.  Ed Emmett and Bob Hebert were impressed enough with our efforts to take time from their busy schedules and come and sit down and talk with us.  Imagine having these two county judges in the same room at the same time, listening to our concerns and offering their advice to us.  Priceless, as the commercial says.  But we didn’t stop there.  State Senator Joan Huffman also came and met with us.  In January, we plan to have the sheriffs from both counties meet with us.  Stay tuned.  We’ll offer that as a public meeting and encourage all our citizens to attend. 

We are a fledgling organization and we still have a long way to go to meet any of the challenges which our community faces.  But we are off to a good start. We have strong support in the community for our work.  We already have new homeowners associations wanting to join our work.  Our goal is to bring the entire community of 60,000 residents into the organization.  As County Judge Ed Emmett noted, that will make us bigger as a community than the city of Galveston.  The coming year will be very important for our efforts as we begin to develop an action plan to confront the problems of our aging community. 

It has been my great privilege to serve as President of this organization as we have gone through our formative stages.  At no time was I alone in this project.  I have been blessed to have wonderful neighbors like Joyce Nible, Donna Kinerd, Dianne Williams, Dr. Winetta Billings and Bob Leitner share the journey with me.  I want to offer a special thanks to Andy Cerota of Channel 13 who caught our vision and was willing to share our story with the city of Houston.  I continue to meet people who saw that story on television and comment on it to me.  To be sure many others made significant contributions to this work, and I plan to honor all their work as we move forward.  In the meanwhile, I look forward to the challenges and the opportunities of the coming year.  Stay tuned.  As they say, the best is yet to come.

Mike Martin

Welcome

Filed under General Information

Welcome to the website for the Greater Mission Bend Area Council.  As you can probably tell this site is “under construction”.  Please check back as we go about the process of getting this website developed and on the net.  We’ll be there shortl