Montgomery County commissioners voted 5-0 on Thursday, Oct. 22, to approve a new agreement replacing The Woodlands Township's private mounted patrol with sheriff's office deputies on horseback.
The deal commits the township to up to $954,000 in one-time startup costs and close to $1.4 million in recurring annual expenses, Montgomery County Sheriff Wesley Doolittle said at the meeting, as Community Impact Newspaper reported.
Seven horses and seven sheriff's office personnel, including a sergeant and six deputies, will staff the new unit. The county will house the horses in stables at a park off Fish Creek Thoroughfare, Precinct 2 Commissioner Charlie Riley said.
Two full-time county employees will also move to the facility to care for the horses, Doolittle said.
The vote caps a months-long transition away from Alpha & Omega Mounted Patrol, the private contractor whose agreement with the township expires Dec. 31. The township's board voted in September to approve the sheriff's office proposal and allocated about $1.3 million for mounted patrol in its fiscal year 2027 law enforcement budget.
Alpha & Omega had proposed raising its contract from about $1.45 million in 2026 to about $1.62 million in 2027. The township said the sheriff's office model would provide broader law enforcement access and reduce liability to non-township-owned property.
Doolittle said the sheriff's office already has a list of candidates with completed background investigations ready to fill the mounted patrol positions. He said the new unit would benefit security at The Woodlands Mall.
"I think this adds seven additional personnel … to the unit, which will benefit the mall and the security there," Doolittle said.
Riley said a substation could eventually be built at the Fish Creek stable site and called the arrangement beneficial for The Woodlands, Woodforest and Montgomery Trace.
Not everyone was comfortable with the pace. Precinct 4 Commissioner Matt Gray pulled the item to the open agenda and raised concerns about unidentified costs, noting that he believed commissioners had recently voted to raise county property taxes.
Gray said he worried the agreement carried costs that had not been fully identified and that the process was moving too fast. He voted in favor of the measure.
