Allen announces candidacy for Jasper County Judge
By KARI ELLIS Staff Writer

Mark Allen

Mark Allen has announced his candidacy for Jasper County Judge and will seek voter approval in the March 2006 democratic primary election.

Allen is currently an investigator at the Jasper County criminal district attorney’s office and has an extensive background in law enforcement and emergency management.

Born in Port Arthur and raised in the Pine Grove Community in Newton County, Allen graduated from Newton High School and joined the Air Force in 1988.

For six years, until 1994, Allen performed military police duties and was involved in several command situations including plane crashs and nuclear weapons convoys. He served two tours overseas and is a Desert Storm veteran.

Allen’s education includes a bachelor of arts degree in law enforcement administration from Ottowa University in Kansas and an associates degree in criminal justice from the Community College of the Air Force.

He graduated from the Lamar Police Academy in 1995 and was employed with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office from 19961998, when former Sheriff Billy Rowles asked him to come to work at the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office.

“I took the opportunity to come back to this area,” Allen said. “It was something I’d been wanting to do for awhile.”

Allen also holds a master peace officer’s license logging more than 5,395 hours of law enforcemnet and criminal justice training through the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Standard and Education (TCLOSE). He is a certified police in sometimes teaches at the Angelina College police academy, specializing in the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure and laws governing arrest, search and seizure.

In addition, Allen is a state certified special investigator and a certified jailer.

If elected county judge, Allen said he will concentrate on three areas, the first being economic development within the county.

“Jasper County, like most East Texas counties, has a high dependence on our trees and timber production,” Allen said. “We need to add to our tax base, we can’t keep putting the burden on our tax payers.

“There are going to be a lot of issues because of Hurricane Rita, the paper mill devaluation, lower values on homes, a lot of things are going to happen in the next couple of years. We need to try and bring in additional businesses—we need to push hard for economic development.

We have one of the largest counties in Texas and we need to try and bring these businesses in. Our citizens spend millions of dollars a year going to Lufkin, Beaumont, Silsbee,Lumberton, Houston, Dallas, all over, to shop and spend money.

If we can bring more businesses here, our people will stay and not have to travel as much. the county and the cities will benefit from it.

By the same token, we need to push for industry to come in here.

We’ve got rivers, we’ve got major U.S. highways running through here, major rail lines, we’ve got an airport that is perfect. We need to bring in industry that will set up jobs for our people and can set up a broader tax base so we are not so dependent on just Westvaco and the timber industry. hey have been a great help to us but there is a point where we’ve got to grow up and we’ve got to take charge of ourselves.

We also need to exploit that airport. We’ve got a large airport out there. It needs to be updated, it needs additional hangar space. If we can get the aditional hangar space, they can bring in corporate jets that several corporations can house there and we will get additional tax dollars based on just the planes being officially housed there.

Plus, if we update and expand that we can try to market ourselves as a regional hub for , say, a shipping company, fed ex, UPS, somethibng that can come in and out of here.

We also need to push for residential development. Large scale residential neighborhoods are popping up all over Jefferson and Orange counties.

Jasper county needs to encourage residential development and show people that this is a great place to live, that e have the same opportunities, the same services that larger counties have, but we have the small town peace of mind.

Secondly, Allen sayid the county needs to look at the way it supports it’sa law enforment personnel and its legal system.

“First thing we’ve got to look at is updating the Shheriff’s office. we need to look at the possibility of hiring more jailers to allow the jail to be filled to capacity.

Once we achieve that and get those officers there, then we can apply for federal certification and get a federal contract to be able to house federal inmates which will bring more revenue into the county.

We need to get more deputies out there. There are 26,000 people or more in the unincorporated areas of Jasper County, we need more than one or two deputies on duty at a time. We’ve got to show more support for the sheriff. These guys are doing a great job, but when they’re tired, they’re tired and one man can’t be everywhere.

We need to keep them in working vehicles and more officers for their safety as well.

“When a deputy is out there at 2 oclock in the morning at the bottom of Evadale or the top of Browndell, during a domestic disturbance, he needs another officer there. He shouldn’t have to wait 45 minutes to an hour for somebody to get called out and arrive.

Allen said he also wants to consider research to determine the cost effectiveness of a county court of law with felony jurisdiction.

“If we have just a regular working system chrges, felony and misdemeanor, I think we can help push and prosecute cases faster and more efficiently.

That would also bring in more revenue for fines and fees. It’s being done in other counties and it literally pays for itself over time.

Allen has been the deputy emergency management coordinator for Jasper, Newton and Sabine counties since 2002. He acted in the capacity of logistics chief over the space shutte Columbia recovery operation in 2003 and served as the deputy incident commander over the Hurricane Katrina evacuees sheltering operation at the East Texas Baptist Encampment in Newton County.

With such an extensive background in emergency management, Allen says the third issue he will address as county judge is to update Jasper’s emergency managemnt system.

“Our guys did a great job duting all of this (hurricanes), we realized several things during Hurricane Rita. We realized we can be hit by a hurricane, we all woke up to that. We were always under the impression that we would be just an avenue for everybody else down south to come through.

We realize now that we also are subject to evacuation and subject to deadly winds and flooding.

We need to our own evacuation plan, one where we work in conjunction with the other counties for our own safe evacuation, we can’t have our people stuck here because there is no gas and the lines are too long and too slow. We need to work with state, federal and local governments in our region. By the same token, there are those who will stay and who have to stay.

We need to incorporate plans to take care of our citizens who stay and help expedite the return of those who leave.

We need to establish strategies for proper feeding and care, medical services, power restoration.

We were not prepared. None of us ever visualized what a long term without food, water, ice, gasoline and electricity would do. No one did.

We need to be better prepared to take care of our citizens and get them through disasters—not just hurricanes, but tornados, wildfires or floods.

Judge Joe Folk, Billy Ted Smith, the commissioners court, everyone did a great job, I think we need to take what they’ve done and push forward.

Allen’s wife Lori works for Southeat Texas Industrial Services out of Buna.

They have lived north of Buna in the Cairo Springs community since 1998 and have three children, Trenton, 15, Alivia, 14, and Allen’s neice Brooke, 8.