WISE COUNTY (1080 KRLD)- One county in North Texas is preparing for a population boom.
Wise County is currently home to about 75,000 people.
But that number is expected to skyrocket with thousands of new homes sprouting up, especially in the far southeastern portion of the county along the 287 corridor.
For example, a new development called Reunion, at the site of the former Rolling V Ranch near Rhome, will have more than 10,000 homes.
This month, DR Horton purchased hundreds of acres in the Northstar development just off 287 at the southern county line.
"There's a lot of good that comes with that growth: we get expanded business opportunities, we get increased sales tax (and) more local economic investment," says Wise County Judge J.D. Clark. "But at the same time, you've got a lot of new service demand as well on our roads (and) on our public safety systems."
Clark says recruiting more law enforcement officers could be a challenge; Wise County is going up against some very tough competition.
"We are adjacent to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex with large urban neighbors who can pay a whole lot more starting out for law enforcement, for example, than we can," says Clark.
Fortunately for Wise County, Senate Bill 22, which establishes a grant program to allow more rural counties like Wise County to be able to offer higher pay, was signed into law last year.
Another challenge is making sure that transportation infrastructure keeps up with the growth.
For example, nearly all roads that lead to the Reunion subdivision are two-lane roads; and with 10,000 homes going up there, that's simply not going to cut it.
"We're just going to keep making the case to our state and federal partners that we need more infrastructure money here in Wise County so that TxDOT can accelerate some of their programs and get more bang for our buck by spending on it now rather than waiting 10, 15 years down the road when we've got even more pain points," says Clark.
Fortunately, Wise County has a good role model to the east.
"Collin County is a good model that we look at a lot in terms of how their growth has happened with housing developments over the past couple of decades, and we see a lot of similarities there," Clark says. "There's a lot to learn from, a lot that they've done well (and) a lot that they wish they'd known before as the growth was starting."
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