After 28 years in office, Kenedy County Judge J.A. Garcia is ready to step down and let voters decide in the November general election who his replacement should be: either Precinct 1 Commissioner Lewis E. ‘Buddy’ Turcotte III, a Democrat, or Mitch Thomas, a Republican. Kenedy County Judge J.A. Garcia, who has been in office since 1983, is ready to ride off into the sunset once his final year expires.

“This is my twenty-eighth year in office,” Garcia said. “I believe in term limits and I have been here too long and I think now it is time for someone else to do the job.”

Garcia’s time has seen the county’s population slip a bit.

“Kenedy County hasn’t grown, in fact I think it has lost some in population since I first came here,” Garcia said. “I think when I first took office, we had between 500-600 people in the county and now we are down to about 400.”

Still, the judge said, the county has seen improvements.

“As far as growth, we have seen some changes,” Garcia said. “This is the second time we have refurbished the courthouse, the first time was when I came in the early 1980s. Back then we just needed to get it updated but now we have done work in compliance with the Texas Historical Commission in trying to keep it within their guidelines.”

You can also throw in certain edifices onto Garcia’s resume. “In my time, the county has also acquired some property and built things like the Justice Building, we’ve also acquired an annex building,” Garcia said. “We are trying to improve what we can like keeping the streets and drainage up, we’re also working on this park project which I think would be very helpful but it all takes time so a lot of it is going to be completed after I am gone.”

Acquiring employee benefits was another task Garcia undertook early in his tenure.

“When I first took office, there was no retirement plan, no hospitalization plan and we implemented both a year or two after I took office which I thought was very good for our county employees,” Garcia said. “We also worked on redistricting plans because the precincts were way out of line. Since I have been in office we have tried to keep the lines reapportioned equally between the precincts. Other than that, we have always worked to improve our little town of Sarita and keep taxes down as much as possible.”

Now Garcia is hoping Kenedy County residents - whose numbers are limited - will cast their ballots in the November general election where Precinct One Commissioner Lewis E. ‘Buddy’ Turcotte III (Democrat) and Mitch Thomas (Republican) hope to be elected as the new judge.

“It’s very important, just think of how many registered voters (approximately 290) we have here in Kenedy County,” Garcia said. “That one vote counts for a lot and many people win elections by just a few votes, so it is very important for county residents to get out and vote. If they don’t vote then they cannot complain about their representatives here in the county.”