November 6, 2025 - Jessie Griffith has resigned as mayor of the city of Joaquin as of the Friday, October 31, council meeting.
Griffith shares that the duties of mayor, which he has been willing to take on, aren’t without their personal impact as that stress has wrought havoc on his health, and due in part to that he made the decision to resign.
“Last Memorial weekend I had a heart attack,” said Griffith.
During Griffith’s first term as mayor, he highlights some of the challenges they had involving HAZMAT incidents.
“My first term as mayor we had a lot to happen. We had two major HAZMAT spills,” said Griffith.
Griffith said the city had to pay for the first one, which involved theft of the city’s diesel that was drained into a creek.
“Another one we were able to get a grant from TCEQ/EPA to pay when they dumped the cooking grease,” said Griffith.
When he was sworn in for his second term, a new public works director had to be named.
“There were a lot of problems found with the pumps and the lines and everything, and then we had violations from the past administrations at TCEQ,” said Griffith. “I made everybody aware of what was going on and I figured it was better to fix the pumps and lines and have the water running inside instead of outside the lines. To me that just makes common sense.”
According to Griffith, violations through TCEQ were pending at one point and rather than incur fines, he says that TCEQ allowed the city to use those funds that would have gone toward fines instead toward repairs of the city infrastructure. Griffith explained that when the city water is down in Joaquin, water is supplied by Logansport and those bills can range from $25,000 to $40,000.
“If we didn’t fix those water lines, we have to contend with those large water bills and we were still going to have to pay TCEQ,” said Griffith. “This way we fix the lines, we don’t have to pay TCEQ any violations and whenever I walked out the other day our [water] bill was $9,000.”
Griffith recalled that someone asked him if he authorized the payment for those repairs, and he said he did and that it only made sense to fix the problem, especially as demonstrated by the reduction in the water bill.
During his time as mayor, Griffith shares that he helped secure the grant for the boat ramp on the Texas side, a new water well for Joaquin, a new $500,000 downtown revitalization grant and a $500,000 grant for groundwater storage, and he helped with Mariana lithium in coming to Joaquin and beginning work on their factory.
“I want to say thank you, to everybody that stood behind me and I think I did a pretty good job, I think I can walk away with my head high and like I told them from the very beginning I don’t do politics and I wasn’t about to start now,” said Griffith.
Griffith wants the community to know that money was spent on making needed repairs in the city.
“I want the people of Joaquin to know what the money went to, that it went to fixing stuff, it was not spent on anything except for repairs to the city of Joaquin.”
The Garrett Family Foundation has got a lot of good things going on and Griffith wants to see that town grow, and he wants to see enough job opportunities made available in Joaquin so that when kids graduate they don’t have to leave to make a living.
“I brought some good stuff into town and my job was to make Joaquin better when I left than when I stepped in and I believe I did that,” said Griffith.
Griffith said he hopes it keeps going and he looks forward to seeing Joaquin continue to grow.
