The Milam County Annex: A Half-Hazard Affair

BY KINCAID CALLAHAN | MCGRATH NEWS EDITORIAL STAFF

Milam County Judge Steve Young, the architect behind the Milam County Annex. Image Credit: Wired.com

After he won the 2018 election for Justice of the Peace in Milam County, Steve Young

made a proclamation: During his tenure, Milam County’s various government offices would be

moved out of downtown Cameron and into a single building. The building would be called the

Milam County Annex, and would be the cornerstone of his campaign called “Moving Milam

Forward”. On the surface, his proposal appears to have been a success, but the execution of this

move has proven to be problematic in the eyes of many of Young’s constituents.

In order to provide some context to the situation, let’s have a look at some history.

The Milam County Annex and Moving Milam Forward campaigns actually predate

Judge Young’s tenure. According to former Milam County GOP chairman Bill Whitmire, the

Moving Milam Forward campaign has roots that trace all the way back to the early 2010’s.

Whitmire claims that the original plan was to incorporate the county offices into the former
satellite campus of Temple College on the outskirts of Cameron (pictured below).

Original choice for Milam County Annex. This location has since been turned into an office for Ebco General
Contractors. Image Source: Google Earth

At the time, county commissioners ultimately decided against this idea, and it was tabled,

with the building being purchased by a general contractor as office space.

Fast forward to 2018. Young has been elected and is preparing to get to work on the

annex. As Cameron is the seat of Milam County, the new building would of course be located

there. That’s when the first problem presented itself: The ideal building had already been

occupied by a private company, as discussed previously.

As negotiations reached their climax, a new location was ultimately chosen. The former

site of the Little River Cameron Hospital (pictured below), which had recently closed in late

2018, was in town only a couple streets off Highway 77.

Former site of Little River Cameron Hospital and current location of the Milam County Annex. Image Credit:
Google Earth

The building was leased out to the county, so work began on converting the former

medical facility into government office space. That’s when the second problem presented itself.

The old hospital building was in awful shape. The renovation project, which began in 2020,

would feature approximately 3.5 million in repair costs. Mind you that this is completely

separate from the costs associated with the purchase.

According to Virtual Builders Exchange, the project needed new electrical and plumbing,

selective demolition, asbestos removal, thermal and moisture protection, and landscaping, among

other things.

For some in Milam County, one question started to circulate: “If we’re going to spend

that much money, why don’t we just have a new building built?” After all, many counties in

Texas had completed similar annexation projects using newly-constructed buildings. But by that

point, the project had already begun, and would prove to put strain on the county budget, as

shown by proposed tax hikes around the same time period.

After multiple delays due to the arrival of the COVID-19 virus in Texas and subsequent

economic shutdown, the Milam County Annex would be completed in multiple stages
throughout 2022, and is now operating at its full capacity while some old office locations in

downtown Cameron are still being cleaned out and prepped for sale.

The new facility includes almost all offices for the county, as well as a telehealth station

courtesy of Texas A&M. So far, there have not been any incidents with the newly refashioned

building, and business has gone on as usual.

Young’s project, by all official accounts, was a success, but Milam County didn’t seem to

see it that way. With approval dropping dramatically throughout his tenure, when time came for

his reelection campaign, Young would ultimately be defeated in the Republican primary by none

other than former party chair Bill Whitmire.

The sentiment among many voters in Milam County was similar: Judge Young had taken

a project with potential and rushed it to completion with a non-ideal location and little planning.

The annex building, despite its renovations, is still old and outdated by most accounts. And

lastly, the all-at-once method taken to moving offices has currently left downtown Cameron

almost completely empty, with prospective businesses now having to try and fill space in what

was suddenly transformed into a mini ghost town.

There’s no way to tell for sure if a different approach would have yielded surefire

success, but the results of the Milam County Annex project leave a lot to be desired, and may

have been the catalyst for the unraveling of Judge Young’s election prospects in 2022. Only time

will tell if the project will be a success, but for the time being, it doesn’t quite live up to the

promise of Moving Milam Forward into a new era.