STOP the District is a group of volunteers that spontaneously formed in response to the imposition of the taxing authority Harris County Improvement District No. 11 on the businesses in the "West Montrose" area of Houston, Texas. Our mission is to repeal this inequitable tax through the process of dissolving the district. Since our formation, the district merged with the neighboring Harris County Improvement District No. 6 and renamed itself the Montrose Management District. Accordingly, we now seek dissolution of the combined district. To understand our commitment to this project, a review of the history of its formation is helpful.

Special Districts were codified a hundred years ago as a way for civic-minded businesses to create infrastructure in the growing state of Texas. Most special districts today are Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs) and, indeed, there are numerous references in the special district law to the Texas Water Code. This infrastructure purpose is indicated in section 375.021 of the Local Governments Code upon which these districts are based. It states: "A district may be created only in an area devoted primarily to commercial development and business activity..." And yet, the last twenty years has seen an explosion of special districts in established, mixed-use areas.

For the Montrose area, the effort to impose a district began in 2005 legislative session with a robust effort to establish the Buffalo Bayou Management District draped over an area west of - and about the size of - downtown. Political stresses and strains broke the target up until all that Senator Rodney Ellis and State Representative Garnet Coleman managed was to create a much smaller Harris County Improvement District No. 6, which came to be known as the 'East Montrose Management District'. The 2007 legislative session brought in Ellen Cohen as the new State Representative for the area west of that district and with her support, HB 4091 intended to revise the boundaries of District 6 to encompass an area west of it that would effectively triple its size. This bill passed the legislature only to be vetoed by the Governor for partisan reasons. Finally, in the 2009 legislative session, State Representatives Ellen Cohen and Senator Rodney Ellis managed to establish, with HB-4722, a distinct Harris County Improvement District No. 11.

The effect of the bill was to create a new chapter in the Special District Local Laws Code appointing and providing the legal authority for a board of directors to start up and run the new district. However, paraphrasing Section 3878.204 of the new law, 'The board may not impose an assessment unless a written petition requesting service has been filed with the board'. Unfortunately for district taxpayers, the requirements for a petition for service are laughably low: '[signatures from]… the owners of a majority of the assessed value of real property in the district… or at least 25 owners…". Since, there were around 1000 properties subject to the tax, the district really only needed just 25 signatures to kick things off.

Really.

Even with this pathetically low requirement, the district still took approximately one year to discretely gather the few necessary signatures on a 'petition for service'. Why would anyone sign such a thing? We tried to find out. Of the 26 signatories to the formation petition, a dozen could not be reached for comment, a few were not listed on the tax appraisal roll, one or two later claimed the petition had been misrepresented to them, and several have joined us in petitioning for dissolution! These signatories comprised 3% of the property owners and 6% of the total value of the tax appraisal roll and yet, it was the basis for the formation of the district.

Herein lays one of the core reasons for STOP the District. By what contortions of rational thought can a politician believe that any law is fair that binds a thousand through the wishes of 25?

On October 21, 2010 an organizational hearing was held. For many of us, notification of this was the first indication we ever had of the existence of this new taxing authority. This, then, is another motivation for dissolving the district. The formation of this district was classic backroom politics. An open discussion of the benefits and costs of a special district prior to formation would have been fatal to its creation as happened recently with the proposed "Stadium Park Management District".

A crowd of over 50 unhappy business owners and property owners spoke up on the lack of notification, the duplication of services, and the undemocratic notion that 25 could compel the taxation of a thousand. There the property owners were introduced to David Hawes of Hawes Hill Management group - the intended management service for the district - and attorney Clark Lord of Vincent & Elkins, among others. These are people of such immense talent than when a frustrated taxpayer asked simply "Is this a done deal?" Mr. Lord was able to 'answer' the question without using the words "yes" or "no"! A catalyst for those business owners who banded together into STOP the District was the shocking, autocratic indifference of a board who knew they had us in a legal chokehold.

On January 10, 2011 the board met to discuss and vote on whether or not the district should form. Although the board can proceed over the objections of the taxpayers, they nonetheless provided a public comment period allowing two minutes per person. Approximately 35 property owners took their two minutes to speak ardently against formation. For over an hour, the board heard property owners protest that the services were not needed, the tax is not wanted, the formation of this district had been virtually secret, and that there were discrepancies with the signatures in their petition for service. While it is true that, in that hour, two people stood up to voice their support for the proposed district, it turns out they were both members of District 6 with no obvious stake in District 11. Tellingly, not one signer of the formation petition testified. So, as the last speaker sat down, the board proceeded to vote unanimously in favor of the district. Such is the nature of our new district's board. After the five year march through the halls of Austin to our tax bills, we had little hope that this group would decide to vote against giving themselves nearly a million dollars a year in revenue. We have even less hope that they will spend our money as effectively as we ourselves would. We are very sure, however, in their commitment to bureaucratic excess.

Following the January 10th resolution, the boards of District 6 and District 11 were free to consolidate the two districts into one. Members of STOP the District maintained vigilant lookout for notice of a meeting at which we expected to witness the consolidation. The next publicly attended meeting occurred on March 10, 2011. At this meeting, members of the public learned that the districts had been joined in a meeting on February 7, 2011 although notices for that meeting were never detected nor, according to the minutes, were members of the public present.

At the March meeting it was also disclosed that disbursements were to be made to Vinson and Elkins in the amount of $249,000 for services rendered in creating the district. Back pay of $64,000 was disbursed to David Hawes whose firm, Hawes, Hill, and Calderon, will provide continuing services for $6000 per month. Additional administrative expenses are contemplated including salaries for full-time employees and consulting - meeting all our expectations for bureaucratic excess.

Presently, the new Montrose Management District collects a levy on roughly 1100 properties in a geographical area encompassing approximately 10,000 properties total. Under the laws authorizing the district, this hapless group of taxpayers is provided only two mechanisms to address the actions of the board of directors. They can: 1) petition the board for additional services (and taxes), or 2) petition the board to dissolve; there is no other power or influence available under the law. Faced with this paucity of choices, STOP the District will vigorously pursue the only reasonable course of action available to it: dissolution of the Montrose Management District.