Montrose district cancels meeting
The embattled Montrose Management District has canceled its monthly board meeting scheduled for Monday as critics of the group call for its dissolution.
The cancellation, which wasn’t posted on the district’s website Friday, was confirmed by Richard Weber, a public relations official who works with a firm representing the district. The reason for the cancellation was “simply due to a lack of agenda items,” Weber said in an email.
He said there will be a combined meeting, likely the week of Dec. 18.
The district, an organization formed to assess property owners and use the funds on area improvements and services, recently appealed a judge’s ruling from late October that said it had improperly collected nearly $6.6 million. The ruling was based on an assessment petition now deemed void by the court. The judge also ruled that the district could not spend any newly collected assessments.
More than a dozen property
owners spoke in protest of the district last Friday during a public hearing to present a new 15-year service and assessment plan. They said they have not benefitted from the district’s programs and that the assessments amounted to double taxation. No board members were in attendance.
The Montrose district is a combination of separately formed districts: east and west.
Executive director Ben Brewer III said the group is seeking to merge the two areas into one with a single assessment and service plan. The east side plan expires at the end of the year.
In order for the district to begin assessing property owners under the new plan — which proposes to spend some $60 million — it needs at least 25 property owners to agree and sign petitions.
Brewer said the group is in the process of collecting signatures.
“We’d like to get the plan approved before the end of the year,” he said. “That’s our goal.”
Board member Ryan Haley said he was out of town for last Friday’s meeting.
Haley said he could not comment on the litigation that led to the recent court ruling, but he thinks some of the anger from property owners is misplaced.
“The district has done a lot of wonderful things for the community,” he said.
The lawsuit, originally filed by a property owner in 2012, pertains to the west side of district.
Management districts are created by the Texas Legislature and are meant to promote and improve an area, supplementing city services. With approval from a specified number of property owners, a district can levy taxes on commercial property owners within and issue bonds to finance their operations.
The Montrose district was required to have a petition with signatures of at least 25 property owners before it began assessing owners. State District Judge Daryl L. Moore ruled that petition void in October after a court in 2016 found that the petition included some residential property owners who were not assessed and therefore none of the assessments were valid.
Commercial property owners in the district have been assessed at a rate of 12.5 cents per each $100 of property value.
A message to board chairman Claude Wynn was returned by the district’s PR firm.