FAQ

Who is on the board of the Management District?

The original HAMD Board of Directors was put in place by the same legislation that created the management district in 2008. Three of the members, current Chairwoman Helen Bonsall, Darryl Bailey and Ann Collum, have been on the board since the beginning, and former Chairman Danny Perkins had been on the board since the beginning, but resigned in December 2020, the month after we started circulating our petition. New board members are selected by the existing board, and then approved by the city council. This means that even though you are taxed by HAMD, you don't get to directly vote for the people who spend your tax dollars. To make matters worse, the board found a legal loophole that allows them to fill vacant positions on the board with a member of their choosing without city council approval, and have exploited this loophole to appoint 7 new members this year. That means more than half of the current board has been appointed since we started circulating the petition to dissolve HAMD, and not a single one is accountable to the property owners HAMD is taxing.

According to the law, to be eligible to sit on the board an individual must be a property owner or agent of a property owner in the management district, or reside within the management district. Since a property owner can delegate anybody as agent, this effectively means anyone at all--even those not subject to the HAMD tax or hardly even connected to this business community--can sit on the board. For example, board member Vincent Marquez is the agent of a homeowner within the borders of the district, which is somehow legal even though homeowners do not even pay the HAMD tax! Of the current 13 board members, 4 are commercial property owners, 4 are employees of commercial property owners, 2 are agents of property owners that are not assessed by HAMD, and 3 are homeowners not assessed by HAMD.