The Hobby Area Management District was created by an act of the Texas Legislature in 2008. This legislation allowed for HAMD to levy an assessment on property owners in the District if only 25 of the over 850 affected commercial property owners signed a petition to fund the district, which the board did not accomplish until 2013, getting less than 2% of the assessed property value of the District to approve of this taxation. They impose a fee of 15 cents per $100 of property value (based on the county's yearly appraisals) on commercial property owners. Nearly all of the services they claim to provide are either self-promotion that does nothing for local businesses, or are redundant to services the city already provides. HAMD has been poorly managed for years, with 30% of the budget going to lawyers and PR firms rather than the services that the business owners are paying for twice. Gary Gates, a local business owner subject to this assessment, decided to contract a team to circulate a petition for the dissolution of this bureaucratic entity.

Working directly with business owners going door-to-door, we have been able to build a massive coalition. For the convenience of the owners, we have been happy to send our field team to visit each business. We have hand collected hundreds of petitions and have been able to get firsthand accounts of the community's concerns.

The team has done an incredible amount of work and research behind the scenes. We've made dozens of open records requests to the HAMD and have researched HAMD's finances, invoices, contracts, legislation, etcetera. We're happy to share any information that you need to help you make the most informed decision possible. We're working tirelessly to visit local businesses and to reach out-of-state business owners and higher-ups in large corporations so that we can let them know about the petition. This isn't just about our own business: we want to help this whole business community receive significant tax relief