Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Stafford, TX

Stafford began with William Stafford's plantation, established in 1830 with a cane mill and a horse-powered cotton gin, which the forces of Santa Anna burned on April 15, 1836, during the Texas Revolution before Stafford rebuilt it.

A settlement called Stafford Point grew around the plantation site, and it became a townsite in August 1853 when the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railway began stopping there.

Stafford stayed a tiny farming settlement for a century - it had just 50 residents in 1884 - and did not incorporate as a city until 1956.

Stafford is famous across Texas for abolishing its municipal property tax in 1995: it is the only Houston-area city, and the most populous city in Texas, that funds itself from sales and franchise taxes instead of a city property tax.

Stafford is a small city of only about 7 square miles, but its business parks, shopping centers, and roughly 20 hotels draw a weekday workforce that is a multiple of its resident population.

Stafford's longtime mayor Leonard Scarcella, first elected in 1969, was the longest-serving mayor in America when he died in office in 2020, and he was the architect of the zero-property-tax policy.

Stafford had a population of 17,666 at the 2020 census, and Census Bureau figures for 2020-2024 count 6,643 households averaging 2.62 people each.

Fewer than 40% of Stafford's homes are owner-occupied, an unusually low share for a Texas suburb, reflecting its large apartment and rental stock.

Stafford is served by the Stafford Municipal School District, created after a 1977 vote to secede from the Fort Bend Independent School District and upheld as constitutional in 1981 - it is the only municipal school district in Texas.

The Stafford Municipal School District educates about 3,500 students on a single municipal complex campus shared with city facilities, an arrangement unique in the state.