When it rains, it pours, the saying goes, and the water in the Wellington Trace subdivision is 5 feet high and rising.
We first read of Wellington Trace last month when the Record-Chronicle's Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe reported the subdivision, developed in 2005 through one of those jerry-rigged special taxing districts, was plagued with deteriorating streets, busted lighting and general decrepitude as a result of the developer going bust and leaving its assets in the hands of a bank, which then proceeded to go into receivership itself.
Now the directors of the improvement district, none of whom live in Wellington Trace, seem prepared to issue $1.36 million in bonds to make the needed repairs, leaving the homeowners with considerable bond debt and an uncertain but gloomy tax burden in their future.
Heinkel-Wolfe reported this latest discouraging development last Saturday, and at the time, many Wellington Trace residents were unaware that a bond issue was being contemplated. They are scrambling now to get more information.
Wellington Trace, which lies in Oak Point's extraterritorial jurisdiction, has weathered a perfect storm of mismanagement, neglect and plain old bad luck. When the developer folded, and the bank that took it over went into receivership, the subdivision ended up pretty much with no one in charge, and that recently began to show in cracked streets and nonfunctioning street lights.
The improvement district board seems to have authorized the issuance of $4 million in bonds back in 2005, but it's not clear if they ever got sold; the Texas Bond Review Board doesn't have any records for the Oak Point Water Control and Improvement District No. 2.
Now the directors of the district are planning to issue $1.36 million in bonds; we hope somebody is taking notes when the vote is taken.
It is ironic - and sad - to contemplate that the original intent behind the enabling legislation that resulted in the proliferation of these special taxing districts was to assist rural residents who wished to tax themselves in order to make improvements to streets and utilities.
Developers quickly glommed onto the law as a way to help finance their projects. They would buy up some undeveloped property, move in an employee or two to establish "residency," and then hold an "election" in which the ringers constituted the entirety of the electorate. Thus the improvement district was created and its directors could then issue bonds and assess tax rates that the future residents would never get to vote on.
We don't know if it's too late to help the residents of Wellington Trace out of the pickle they're in; we suspect that it is. But it is past time for the Legislature to take a long, hard look at the laws that enable such manipulation.
