The Boomtown Partnership: Maverick County Judge Jose "Pepe" Aranda

November 16, 2006
By Bill Sontag
Feature Writer

Eagle Pass and Maverick County government and civic leaders demonstrate that good things can happen when they create an atmosphere of mutual trust.

County Judge Jose “Pepe” Aranda believes the philosophy must extend to Del Rio, Crystal City, Uvalde, Carrizo Springs, Piedras Negras, Coah., Mexico, and beyond. “I’m not the kind that says we’re better, or they’re better, but I like to think of this as a region. If we don’t work together, we all get hurt,” Aranda said Friday (Oct. 27), from his office in the Maverick County Courthouse Annex, Eagle Pass.

Rare stuff, but the citizens of this south Texas community are both the beneficiaries and the supporters of this progressive approach to governing and civil service. Maverick County Judge Jose A. Aranda Jr., “Pepe” to his friends, and Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, and the respective governing bodies they represent, are quietly showing other jurisdictions how it’s done.

State Representative Pete P. Gallego represented Maverick County and Eagle Pass before “gerrymandering” of voting and election districts, but Gallego is still fond of the area and the two men who lead the city and county now. Interrupted during his Sunday (Oct. 29) breakfast at Chinto’s Restaurant, in Del Rio, Gallego agreed that their cooperation is productive. “And they actually like each other!” Gallego laughed.

Aranda was homegrown in his native city of Eagle Pass where he graduated from high school in 1974. But, after securing an associate’s degree from Southwest Texas Junior College and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Sul Ross University, Aranda continued what would become a 20-year career with H-E-B Grocery Company.

He became store director at the age of 24, including management of the H-E-B Store Number One, 500 Pecan St., Del Rio, followed by assignments in Uvalde, Laredo, McAllen and Corpus Christi. After practicing private business in Eagle Pass, Aranda successfully ran for the office of mayor of Eagle Pass in 1998.

Then, Aranda explored another dimension of public service and was elected county judge, taking office in 2003. He’s running unopposed for his second four-year term, as he did for his second term as mayor. Now, Aranda is on a path of determination to restore public trust while, poco a poco, taking care of county business, starting with critical infrastructure needs.

The county Aranda serves is named for Samuel Maverick, 19th century rancher and a reluctant cattleman who refused to manage his herds with brands, and the name “maverick” has come to denote strays of any species that must fend for themselves without identity.

Aranda sees county residents who live outside the Eagle Pass city limits as citizens who want the same services as city residents expect, and pose one of the biggest challenges to Maverick County Commissioners Court. For that reason, the development of a $103 million water/wastewater treatment plant, to be located near an old radar base outside the city, will take care of the entire county’s needs in the immediate future.

Robert Gonzalez, general manager of the Eagle Pass waterworks system, applauds the collaborative effort. “Infrastructure is being given attention at a very proper time,” said Gonzalez, while meeting with Aranda. “Growth is political stability, and setting long-range goals among major government entities is very important.”

Gonzalez also cited an explosion of population growth from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego, Calif., expected to reach 25 million soon, and 50 million within the next 20 years. “Also we have a major migration to the northern Mexican states,” Gonzalez said, leaving unspoken the obvious that such a shift will place more demands on U.S. cities.

Aranda elaborated that the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction needs also include paving of more than 35 miles of roads in colonia neighborhoods in the county. He anticipates a successful reply to a grant to get the job done. “Most definitely,” Aranda asserted.

What Aranda sees as economic growth indicators are both impressive and varied. “In the past, we’ve had unemployment upwards of 30 percent, here, but now it’s only 8.6 percent,” Aranda said. “Also, between January, 2002, and January, 2006, we’ve grown 3,751 jobs here … And we’ve also seen a 15 percent increase in sales tax revenues,” he added.

Again and again, Aranda returned to the not-so-secret, but little talked about ingredient in the recipe for continued civic achievements in Maverick County and Eagle Pass. “Our political stability has really improved. We were bad about criticizing each other, but now all the elected officials are very aware of this growth, and the need to work together to continue it.”

Aranda feels the duality of his experience, sitting first in the mayor’s chair, and now in the county judge’s office, yielded important cognizance of the duties of both offices.

“I knew about the wedge between the city and the county, and that’s what motivated me to run for this position,” explained Aranda. He affirmed that he intends to diminish or remove that wedge.

Aranda sees the legislated “wall” between Mexico and the United States as a pernicious wedge of another kind that should never be deployed. Though the bill that authorized building the border fence along the Rio Grande has already been signed by President Bush, Aranda and Foster intend to fight it before it gets built.

“Why are you spending so much money on that when you could be beefing up the Border Patrol and other measures here,” Aranda asks Washington officials. He showed LIVE! photographs of a ten-foot-high, ornamental fence proposed by Border Patrol officials to be sited above the sprawling park landscape that follows a 1.1 mile stretch of the river through town.

This fence alternative, far more appealing to Aranda, is still controversial, but a better option than the imposing barrier that may destroy both the scenic viewshed and a feeling of mutualism that Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras have nourished for years.

That ambience and the evidence of economic growth espoused by Aranda are readily seen in a 1999 manifestation of it, completed while he was still mayor of Eagle Pass. “One of our greatest achievements as a city and county was our second international bridge,” Aranda said, concluding that bridges are more favorable to progress than walls.

For the other part of this series, Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, please click here .

Please see the rest of the "Eagle Pass Rising" series. Click here for more.