Photo - Mara Soloway

Sugar Land residents have an area-wide influence

By Mara Soloway

Longtime Sugar Land residents Donna and George Buenik have raised their family here – daughters Jennifer, 30, and Leah, 27, who are now both married – and set a standard of community service that their girls learned from and emulate in their own lives. The couple believes that helping those who can’t help themselves is a natural aspect of being part of the community.

The Bueniks have been actively involved with their synagogue, helping neighbors in need on their own and through nonprofits, and with Fort Bend ISD as their daughters made their way from kindergarten through high school graduation. Donna was a room mom and member of the PTA. The girls were both active in school, including being cheerleaders in First Colony Middle School and Dulles High School, which involved coordinating dances, homecomings, Mother’s Tea and Pro-Grad.

“I think it teaches the kids a very good lesson when they see their parents volunteering at school and also looking out for the neighbors,” George, 59, said. “I grew up watching my father be a police officer. I saw him put on his blue uniform and go out and help people in the
community every day. It made a huge influence on what I decided to do for a living.”

“Our daughter Jennifer has a program at her work where she would go to an elementary school and read to this young lady every week,” Donna, 57, said. “And Leah is really active with a Houston Volunteer Lawyers program, Kids in Need of Defense, a nonprofit, pro bono organization that provides legal services to unaccompanied minor children during their deportation proceedings. Like George said, the influence on your children is so impactful.”

Over the years the couple’s outreach has grown to affect the quality of life for many across the Houston area as part of their careers: Donna as Director of Builder Programs for the Greater Houston Builders Association (GHBA) and George as Director of Public Safety and Home­land Security for the City of Houston.

Donna has worked at the GHBA for 12 years. She is the staff liaison with custom builders, remodelers, production builders and the Green Built Gulf Coast program. She plans numerous educational and networking events, like golf tournaments, clay shoots, and barbeques, and various charitable events that GHBA members, along with she and George, take part in.

GHBA’s annual projects are coordinated with its nonprofit, HomeAid Houston. In 2017, a home was remodeled to improve shower facilities on the first floor of a home for a young man in a wheelchair. “We do projects every year. It’s a lot of fun and rewarding,” said Donna. “This year we did a two-phase project that improved and expanded the shower facilities at Cross­roads at Park Place, an organization committed to promoting the health, hygiene and dignity of individuals experiencing chronic homelessness and poverty in southeast Houston.”

The GHBA volunteers also did minor repairs, painting and landscaping at four of the houses at Wellsprings Villages, which offers long-term transitional housing and supportive services for homeless and abused women.

Both Donna and George are advisory board members for Casa de Esperanza de los Niños, from which Donna and the GHBA received the Volunteer Group of the Year award. The GHBA and the Bueniks have supported Casa’s efforts with several remodeling projects and annual spring landscaping for the past three years. George is also a volunteer for Houston’s CrimeStoppers and serves on its board of directors.

Donna and the GHBA have also played a role in the development of regulations to address the enormous problem builders have of metal theft on job sites, which resulted in the Houston Police De­partment developing regulations requiring a five-day hold on sales and extensive verifying documentation. After both the City of Houston and Harris County adopted these regulations, it was approved in 2013 as House Bill 555.

George has 34 years in law enforcement. He came back to the City of Houston in February after retiring in March 2017 from the Houston Police Department as executive assistant chief (2014-2017) and assistant chief (2004-2014). In his new job, he is responsible for keeping Houston safe during major weather events and other crises via the three main sections of the role: Homeland Security, for which he manages about $56 million in active federal grants; the Office of Emergency Management; and the Houston Emergency Center, which includes 911 telecommunications operations and has the majority of employees – about 250 of the approximately 285 staff members – working for him.

The Homeland Security office is heavily involved in working with the wider community through programs such as the five-county emergency preparedness campaign Ready Houston, the Neighborhood Ready and School Ready programs, and the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) that trains residents to prepare for and respond to emergencies. George finds that residents staying informed and watching out for each other is good for crime prevention.

Homeland Security staff monitor terrorist attacks that take place throughout the United States and the world. “We try and make Houston target-hardened and stay ahead of terrorists or active shooters who scope out locations beforehand, looking for a weak link or a soft target at these major events.” One of the grants his office is managing is called Complex Coordinated Terrorist Attacks. With the funding the office plans how to prevent and respond to events such as the terrorist bombings at the 2013 Boston Marathon.

Programs to address active shooters include the Mayor’s Commission Against Gun Violence created in May, less than 10 days after the shooting at Santa Fe High School that killed eight students and two teachers, and wounded 13. “We’re working with all the local school districts and their police chiefs to discuss response to an active shooter,” George said. Another program, Ride Hide Fight active shooter training, was developed by the City of Houston for law enforcement. Donna arranged for its training to be presented to GHBA members.

George was chair of the public safety committee when Houston hosted the Super Bowl. “I oversaw Police and Security operations but it was a team effort in collaboration and partnership with local, county, state and federal partners – we all worked together with NFL security to develop a good plan to prevent an incident from occurring.”

The public safety aspects of George’s job include overseeing the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), which is responsible for helping Houston residents and departments prepare for, cope with and recover from the effects of natural and man-made disasters. This includes opening the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) during any major event for city decision makers to gather.

Right now OEM’s number one priority is community preparedness for natural disasters including hurricanes and floods; it gets the message out to residents via social media and educational events like the recent Extreme Weather Expo at the George R. Brown Convention Center.

George stresses the need for people to be prepared beforea disaster strikes. “We tell people to make a plan, to build a kit, stay informed, and know your neighbors and look out for them.”

The Bueniks agree you can’t downplay the benefits of making a home in a community and becoming active in it. “Sugar Land and Fort Bend County has been a great community – we’ve raised our children and they’ve grown up and been very successful in their lives, their careers and starting families of their own,” Donna said. “It’s because of the community and us, but it takes a village. All of the exposure that they’ve gotten growing up is a great benefit to living here.”

Donna and George relax from the pressures of their jobs through exercise, spending time with their family and friends and traveling. They also enjoy providing care and feeding for a range of wildlife, including around 30 whistler wood ducks and numerous hummingbirds, cardinals, bluejays and quacker parrots that enjoy food and water at the Buenik home. Both Donna and George believe people should be involved in their community to make it better; in their case it literally starts in their own backyard.