FINGER COMPANY POKES INTO THE MONTROSE DISTRICT LAWSUIT FRAY 
A corporate appendage of the Finger Companies has filed a document to add itself as a plaintiff to one of the lawsuits trying to shut down the Montrose Management District, Nancy Sarnoff reports this week for the Chronicle. The company’s Museum Tower along Montrose Blvd. sits a few blocks south of US 59 in a narrow south-pointing offshoot of the district’s boundaries, making it one of the property owners assessed a regular tax; Sarnoff writes that Finger’s new filing zeroes in on that 2016 petition to dissolve the district, which proponents say has garnered signatures from property owners of about 80% of the district’s land area; the filing claims that the district has been trying to invalidate individual signatures in an effort to bring that total back down below the required threshold for dissolution. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Museum Tower
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Tag: Management Districts
The Montrose Management District reports that the first of its shiny new neighborhood marker signs went up over the weekend at Montrose Blvd. and Dallas St., despite the recent movement in the ongoing lawsuit between the organization and the group of property owners petitioning to dissolve it. The case, which was filed in 2012, is still open, though the judge recently filed a handful of findings and judgment documents stating that not all of the signatures that went into forming the district were valid, and that the agency must pay back the $6.5 million it’s collected since then. The district has said it has no plans to do that any time soon, and intends to keep on keepin’ on until any appeals wrap up, which could be years from now.
The signage is part of the sundry prettification projects the district has planned for the neighborhood, which include redoing the colored lighting on the bridges over US 59 — thanks to a funding assist from the city, TxDOT, and the Houston Galveston Area Council:
Sightings on W. Dallas
SCENES FROM A PUBLIC-ISH MEETING OF THE MONTROSE MANAGEMENT DISTRICT 
Yesterday’s mid-day Montrose Management District monthly meeting involved a good deal of waiting around, Nancy Sarnoff reports, as more than a dozen of the Montrose property owners who signed the most recent petition to dissolve the district showed up to chat publicly with the organization’s board members. Some of the owners who had planned to speak reportedly left before doing so, however, as the board started the meeting with a closed executive session that the group’s past agendas and meeting minutes imply usually happens near the end of the monthly sessions. Sarnoff writes that once the board opened the meeting back up for public comments, “many of those who spoke made a similar plea: ‘Accept my petition or drop me from the assessment rolls.‘” A rep from the district says the recent court findings that some of the district’s founding documentation is invalid won’t cause any changes in the organization’s immediate plans (nor cause them to return any of that collected $6.6 million) until any upcoming appeals are finalized; while a final judgment document has been signed in the current case in the 333rd District court, the proceedings are still technically ongoing, as the MMD filed a document last week asking the judge to please change his mind. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo of bike rack in Montrose: Montrose Management District
