On May 2, voters around the Tomball and Magnolia area can head to the polls to cast their ballots. Ahead of election day, here’s what voters should know.

The overview: On election day, voters in Montgomery County must vote at their designated precincts. Voters within the city of Tomball can cast their ballots at City Hall at 401 Market St., Tomball. According to the Texas Secretary of State’s office, voters must bring one of the following when going to vote:

• Texas driver's license
• Texas election identification certificate
• Texas personal identification card
• Texas handgun license
• U.S. military identification card with a photo
• U.S. citizenship certificate with a photo
• U.S. passport

A new Karma Kolache location is coming soon to Rosehill Reserve, officials confirmed.

The details: Karma Kolache’s menu spans from 'kronuts' and 'koffee' to their signature gourmet kolaches, according to their website. Once open, this will be Karma Kolache's sixth location.

• Opening date TBD

• 21941 Rosehill Reserve Drive, Ste. 102, Tomball

Partnering with Visit The Woodlands, First Class Transportation and the Houston-Galveston Area Council, The Woodlands Township announced the Soccer Shuttle, which will offer round-trip services on all Houston match days this summer.

What to expect: Passengers for the Soccer Shuttle must have a valid FIFA World Cup 2026 match ticket, according to the release. Shuttle reservations must be made in advance, and riders must present proof of their game-day ticket when boarding. Standard bus tickets and walk-up passengers are not accepted.

Reservations for the Soccer Shuttle are free through funding from H-GAC through its Commute Solutions initiative, but a nonrefundable administrative fee of $8.50 plus any applicable processing fees will be charged at the time of booking.

There are three departure points in The Woodlands:

• The Woodlands Resort, 2301 N. Millbend Drive, The Woodlands
• Embassy Suites by Hilton The Woodlands at Hughes Landing, 1855 Hughes Landing Blvd., The Woodlands
• Sawdust Park and Ride, 701 Westridge Drive, The Woodlands

Demolition of the vacant Northwest Mall is underway within the Hwy. 290 and Loop 610 corridor, the site for a proposed train station that would offer high-speed travel between Houston and Dallas, a project spokesperson confirmed with Community Impact.

What we know: Demolition began in mid-April and is expected to take approximately 12 months, the spokesperson said. The historic mall opened in 1968 but shuttered its doors in 2017, causing the building to sit abandoned for nearly 10 years.

The spokesperson did not answer questions regarding the approval process for the proposed high-speed rail project, which has not received an official green light, or a timeline for any construction beyond the demolition.

Some context: Texas Central, which has since rebranded to Texas High Speed Rail, originally led the project as a privately-funded venture, Community Impact previously reported. Amtrak then temporarily joined the project after receiving a $63.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. 

However, the federal government pulled the grant last year due to ballooning costs, pushing the project back to the private sector. 

During the April 20-28 early voting period for the May 2 election, 21,253 voters in Montgomery County cast ballots, according to early voting turnout data from Montgomery County Elections Central. Per Montgomery County Elections Central, 473,241 voters were registered as of April 28—meaning 4.5% of eligible voters cast ballots.

Breaking it down: 18,052 of the ballots cast were in-person, and there were 3,201 mail-in ballots, according to Montgomery County Elections Central. The polling locations that had the most in-person ballots cast were the Central Library in Conroe and the Mitchell Library in The Woodlands, with 3,347 and 3,285 ballots cast, respectively.

CenterPoint Energy has made key first-quarter progress in reaching milestones tied to the company’s Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative, according to an April 17 news release from the company.

Digging deeper: Launched after Hurricane Beryl, the initiative is a multiyear effort to strengthen resilience and improve reliability for its 2.9 million electric customers, and to help build the most resilient coastal grid in the nation, according to the release. 

Quote of note: “We are proud of the progress made in 2025 which helped deliver more than 100 million fewer outage minutes when compared to 2024, and we are determined to make even more progress in 2026 as we work toward our defining goal: building the nation's most resilient coastal grid,” said Nathan Brownell, CenterPoint's vice president of Resilience and Capital Delivery, in the release.

Camp Mystic, the Texas Hill Country camp where 28 people died in catastrophic flooding last July, announced April 30 that it will not welcome campers this summer.

The background: The decision comes nearly 10 months after 25 young campers, two teenage counselors and the camp’s executive director, Dick Eastland, died as the Guadalupe River camp flooded July 4. Camp Mystic’s owners had planned to open a secondary campsite called Cypress Lake in late May, but backed down at the urging of flood victims’ families and state lawmakers.

What's happening: A spokesperson for the Department of State Health Services, which licenses youth camps, confirmed to Community Impact that Camp Mystic had withdrawn its application to operate in summer 2026. 

In a statement, Camp Mystic officials said they did not want to “unintentionally effect further harm” on flood victims and their families.

"We also recognize that over 800 girls want to return to Camp Mystic Cypress Lake this summer," they wrote. "Our special bond with our Camp Mystic families does not change or end with the announcement."

Community Impact is reporting on home flooding and flood insurance rates, and is looking to hear from homeowners in the Tomball and Magnolia communities who have experienced flood damage and/or have flood insurance. Please contact Editor Lizzy Spangler at [email protected] if you’re willing to share your story in an interview.