Key decision coming soon for hobbled district
The Montrose Management District, unable to pay its bills, provide services or keep U.S. 59 bridge lights on, will learn Tuesday whether it will be able to resume operations as the district seeks to fight off a lawsuit seeking its dissolution.
After a three-hour hearing Friday, a district court judge said he will rule Tuesday whether to extend a court order that prohibits the management district, whose operations are funded by assessments on commercial property owners, from issuing, collecting or spending those assessments. If the judge extends the order, the district could be shut down until a trial is held on the lawsuit.
The district is being sued by angry property owners who say that its programs don’t benefit them and that the group’s assessments amount to taxation without representation.
“We’re here to tell the district we’re never going away. We’re never going to quit trying,” Andy Taylor, attorney for the property owners, said after the hearing. “We will dissolve you once and for all.”
The Montrose Management
District is one of dozens of improvement districts in Houston authorized by the Legislature to promote economic development and enhance public areas and individual neighborhoods. In Montrose, the district provides services such as security patrols, graffiti removal and colorful lights on the bridges over U.S. 59.
Those lights went dark a week ago after Reliant Energy shut them off for nonpayment of the electricity bill. Late Friday, a tweet from Mayor Sylvester Turner’s Twitter account said he wants the lights back on and that he’d “pay from my own campaign account until we can find a permanent solution.”
Lawyers argued Friday in front of state District Court Judge Daryl Moore over the legitimacy of a petition with more than 1,000 petitions seeking that the district be dissolved. The district had denied that petition, claiming it didn’t meet the threshhold for dissolution.
Bob Rose, a Montrose property owner and plaintiff in both lawsuits, testified Friday that the signatures on the dissolution petition are valid and that has he has documentation proving it.
“I’ll wager anybody any amount of money that those are valid signatures,” he said after the hearing.
In a separate case against the district, one that dates to 2012, a judge in October ruled that it illegally collected nearly $6.6 million in assessments and that it must reimburse that money to property owners. That case is now on appeal.
The lawsuit under which the temporary restraining order was granted was filed in January. It claims the district collected an additional $1.4 million in assessments made after the earlier case was tried more than a year ago and that the additional money should be reimbursed as well. It also makes a claim that the district should be dissolved based on the petition.
If the judge rules in favor of the plaintiffs Tuesday, the district’s operations would be suspended until there was a trial, which, Taylor said, could take months or years.
Barry Abrams, the district’s attorney, declined to comment after the hearing Friday, as did David Hawes of Hawes Hill & Associates, a Houston consulting firm that manages the district. In previous statements, the district has maintained it is operating with its legal charter granted by the state.
Commercial property owners within the boundaries of the Montrose Management District are assessed at a rate of 12.5 cents per every $100 of property value. Residential property owners are not assessed.