LNA Meeting Notes - Wednesday, May 1, 2013

The May 1, 2013 Lindale Neighborhood Association meeting was dedicated to a Municipal Management District powerpoint presentation by Corpus Christi Assistant City Manager Oscar Martinez (His powerpoint presentation is available for download below). Q&A session followed with answers being provided by Oscar Martinez and LNA board members. There was also some discussion of the Vaky street assessment and its relation to the proposed Lindale MMD. Out of 865 total properties in the proposed MMD approximately 32 residents attended the meeting including 5 LNA officers in attendance.

Oscar Martinez noted that the city could not fund street reconstruction by raising sales tax because the Corpus Christi sales tax rate was already at the maximum rate allowed by the State. He said that raising property taxes was not an option for funding because raising property taxes could trigger a "rollback election". He said that a Municipal Management District was a way for residents to "tax themselves" to fund infrastructure reconstruction. He characterized the creation of a MMD as "reinventing government for your community".

Oscar Martinez stated that, because they were currently participating in the Assessment process and therefore were paying 80% of the cost of partial Vaky reconstruction, residents of the 600 block of Vaky Street were excluded from the MMD for purposes of all estimates he provided and LNA officers noted that these particular Vaky St. residents may be completely excluded from the MMD and its additional tax burden. He noted that the reconstruction of the 500 blocks in Lindale 2 were financed by a city bond. Residents living on the previously reconstructed 500 blocks of Lindale 2 however would not be excluded from the district and would share the tax burden of reconstruction of the rest of the Lindale neighborhood.

One resident commented that the MMD numbers did not make sense. If Vaky Street residents were paying a one-time charge of less than $2,000.00 for their street reconstruction, why was it going to cost the rest of us an estimated average of $1,141.00 a year for 20 years?

Oscar Martinez stated that the "liability runs with the land". This is legalese that means that the MMD tax burden is contained in the deed to the land or real estate and is binding upon the current owner and all future owners.

Oscar Martinez stated that, unlike normal property taxes, no exemptions exist for purposes of calculating taxes owed yearly to a Municipal Management District. The Homestead Exemption, Non-Profit Exemptions, Exemptions for people over age 65 and for people with disabilities do not apply to MMD tax rate calculation. Residents are taxed on the full valuation of their property with no exemptions.

One Senior resident living on McCall Street noted that most of the people living on her block were Senior citizens on fixed incomes who were not able to attend the meeting and could not afford any additional tax burden. LNA Board members posited that it may be possible to create exemptions for some residents in the MMD's founding document.

Oscar Martinez noted multiple times during the presentation that creating a MMD would require a vote by a majority of Lindale residents. One resident asked Mr. Martinez what constituted a majority and Mr. Martinez answered that anything over 50% of property owners would constitute a majority and would be sufficient to create the MMD. (Note: Although Mr. Martinez stated multiple times that the votes of a majority of property owners would be required to create a MMD, LOCAL GOVERNMENT CODE CHAPTER 375 seems to indicate that a MMD can in fact be created without a majority vote. And creation of a MMD by Special Statute of the Texas Legislature does not seem to require any vote at all. In fact page 20 entitled "Next Steps" of Mr. Martinez's powerpoint states that a MMD can be created by petition to TCEQ by as little as 50 property owners! This should cause you concern and requires residents to pay attention to what actions are being taken towards creating a Lindale MMD.)

A resident asked Mr. Martinez how many residential Municipal Management Districts currently existed in Corpus Christi. Mr. Martinez answered that there was a newly created residential MMD on N. Padre Island intended to fund canal bulkheads. He also mentioned that the King's Crossing neighborhood had been pursuing the creation of a MMD but that it didn't look like it was "going forward". He recommended that any potential Lindale MMD Board members should take classes in government to avoid the mistakes made by King's Crossing MMD proponents.

After the presentation a few residents commented that we needed to go out and "sell" this MMD idea and "educate" our neighbors. One resident commented that he was a bit concerned that multiple people had mentioned "selling" the idea to neighbors, noting that "selling" the idea to neighbors was different from "polling" our neighbors to see what they thought about the idea. One resident replied that we needed to "sell" the idea as a positive because if we went out and asked neighbors if they wanted their property taxes to rise they would say no.

It was suggested by multiple residents that we should have more meetings about this issue and in the meantime everyone should "educate" their neighbors about the MMD solution.

Original MS PowerPoint presentation by Oscar Martinez (PPTX 688KB). Powerpoint presentation given by Corpus Christi Assistant City Manager Oscar Martinez at the May 1, 2013 meeting of the Lindale Neighborhood Association. Note that you will need MS Powerpoint or Open Office Impress to open this file.

PDF version of Oscar Martinez presentation (PDF 1.55MB). PDF version of the Powerpoint presentation given by Corpus Christi Assistant City Manager Oscar Martinez at the May 1, 2013 meeting of the Lindale Neighborhood Association.

1) Attend the next LNA Meeting

6PM Monday, August 19, 2013
Lindale Senior Center
3135 Swantner Dr.

Attend the Lindale Neighborhood Association meeting and let them know that a 30% property tax increase is not the right solution for Lindale streets.

2) Talk to your neighbors

Let your neighbors know about this important issue and encourage them to attend the next Lindale Neighborhood Association meeting.

 Download Printable Informational Flyer

 Download Printable Lindale MMD Fact Sheet

3) Network

If you would like to receive email notification of important events related to the Lindale MMD (including meeting dates) please email us at . We will only contact you to inform you of important Lindale MMD developments and your information will not be shared with third parties.

Lindale in the News

[July 24, 2013] Letter to the Editor: No Municipal Management District for Lindale - Caller Times (paywall)

[July 12, 2013] Texas' special tax districts need more accountability - Caller Times (paywall)