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WEDNESDAY • JULY 19, 2023 JEANNE GREGORY REALTOR®, CRS, GRI, ABR
Fort Bend / Southwest • Volume 48 • No. 36 • $1.00
Fort Bend Commissioners Court approves industrial development committee By Ken Fountain KFOUNTAIN@FORTBENDSTAR.COM
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Missouri City man sentenced to 60 years in prison for failing to register as a sex offender Staff Reports
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With little discussion, Fort Bend County Commissioners Court last week unanimously approved a committee meant to evaluate county policies and make recommendations on how to attract new industrial development. T he committee, a n initiative of Precinct 3 Commissioner Andy Meyers, will consist of Meyers, a Republican, and Precinct 4 Commissioner Dexter McCoy, a Democrat. When he
first proposed the committee during the court’s June 27 meeting, Meyers had proposed that Precinct 2 Commissioner Grady Prestage be the other member. But McCoy argued in that meeting that since his largely rural district was the likely home of most new industrial development, he should have a more important part to play. Prestage agreed to the change before the vote, according to a spokesman for Meyers. “The Fort Bend Economic Development Council explains that the county has missed several opportunities to
attract and land major industrial operations, and the well-paying jobs that come with them, because Fort Bend County did not have an industrial site ready and available, or one that could be easily and quickly developed (i.e. shovel ready),” Meyers wrote in his agenda item. “Over the past couple of years as companies pursue re-shoring and near-shoring, the industrial and commercial site-selection process continues to evolve with significantly shortened project timelines. Fort Bend County needs to adjust to this new reality.”
In a workshop discussion during the June 27 meeting, representatives of the Fort Bend Economic Development Council, a nonprofit organization not directly related to the county, and Carlos Guzman, the county’s appointed economic development coordinator, laid out the obstacles the county has had attracting new industry and laid out a set of “tools” that the county could implement to overcome those obstacles. Among those tools, as proposed by Meyers and the other officials, are an industrial development corporation, in-
dustrial development districts, and so-called “Super Districts” that would combine the powers of several different types of districts. Many of these would require enabling legislation in the Texas Legislature.
TSTC’s Fort Bend campus teaches robot programming, maintenance
A Missouri City man was convicted on June 30 and sentenced to 60 years in state prison for failing to register as a sex offender. Brain Walker, 53, was convicted of two charges of failure to comply with sex offender registration requirements, a second-degree felony, in the 268th District Court before Visiting Judge James Shoemake, according to a news release from the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors Craig Priesmeyer and Alycia Curtis presented showing that the Missouri City Police Department received information about an unregistered sex offender residing in the city in June 2020. Police, assisted by the Texas Attorney General’s Office and U.S. Marshals. launched an investigation, identifying Walker and his failure to comply with sex offender registration requirements. According to Priesmeyer, authorities learned from multiple sources that Walker had been living in the city for years without making any attempts A student operates a robotic arm in the Robotics & Industrial Controls Technology lab at Texas State Technical College’s Fort Bend County campus in Rosenberg. Courtesy to notify law enforcement. Once TSTC officers learned of Walker’s Staff Reports “Anything that activates Aron Guajardo, the newest Still, for every process are taught both the programpresence, they gave him an opwithout a human is auto- instructor in the program. that is automated, there is ming and maintenance side. portunity to properly register; The demand for robotics mation,” Sparks said. “An “Automation is all about a human behind the scenes While Guajardo believes and automation specialists automatic transmission is doing things with less man- who programmed the robots graduates of the programs SEE PRISON PAGE 2 is growing. As of May 2022, automation. So is the engine power, and robotics are a and how the systems should can easily go on to become Texas sat as the third high- kill that happens when your component of doing that. interact. “There is a degree automation technicians, he Take a robot that threads of programming in robotics,” said that they could also go est employer of robotics and engine overheats.” pipes. You don’t want the ro- Guajardo said. “But not ev- on to specialize in robots. automation technicians in Automation helps handle bot trying to make a thread eryone’s job deals with that. the country, according to “One of the companies I the U.S. Bureau of Labor what would otherwise be in the air, so you add a sensor Many are there to make sure mundane, repetitive tasks or that tells the robot when and that the robots are clean and worked for was wanting to Statistics. integrate robotics into their makes certain tasks run the where to start.” maintained.” Charles Sparks, lead same way, every single time. process,” Guajardo said. “That instructor in Texas State Automation is a process by Robotics teams can either kind of work, of building roWithout the sensor, the roTechnical College’s Robot- which things are done. bot only knows what to do, work on programming or bots and implementing them, not how to do it. A robotics maintaining the robots. Mak- is also available to students.” ics and Industrial Controls Brain Walker, 53, of Missouri Robots, on the other hand, engineer could stand by and ing sure that the robots are Technology program at the City, was convicted in June on Fort Bend County campus are often the machines that manually tell a robot how to up-to-date and functioning at TSTC offers an Associate of two counts of failing to comply in Rosenberg, described actually do the tasks. perform its job over and over their best is crucial to a suc- Applied Science degree and a with sex offender registration automation as anything again, but adding a sensor cessful process. certificate of completion in Rorequirements. Courtesy Fort “Robotics can stand alone to automate the process is not requiring human input botics and Industrial Controls Bend County District Attorney’s to operate in a TSTC press from automation but most quicker, more efficient and When students go through Technology at its Fort Bend Office of the time it doesn’t,” said cheaper. release. the program at TSTC, they County and Waco campuses.