By Moses Leos III
A lawsuit between Kyle and the former owners of the Bunton Creek Estates Public Improvement District (PID) came to a conclusion on Dec. 15.
By a unanimous 7-0 vote, the Kyle City Council approved a settlement between Kyle, PID Holdings, Ltd. and a group of Bunton Creek Estates homeowners who intervened in that suit.
According to Kyle City Manager Scott Sellers, the main points of the settlement include resetting the assessment for each platted lot in the PID. That was done through the assistance of the company DPFG, which acted as a third party administrator to reset the PID.
Sellers said the PID was negotiated down from the original $2,900 assessment to $1,800.
“Basically, we have saved every a homeowner over $1,000 on the PID assessement,” Sellers said.
Kyle also settled on the timeframe of the PID. The PID’s original 30-year timeframe was “compressed” to 20 years.
But Sellers said property owners who pay off the entire assessment within 60 days of the ordinance’s passage “won’t pay any interest on top of that.”
The settlement closes a saga that’s taken roughly two years to complete.
Issues over the Bunton Creek Estates PID date back to 2014 when several homeowners discovered liens on their homes when they attempted to sell.
Homeowners discovered the company that managed the development, PID Holdings Ltd., did not notify them of a PID assessment on their homes.
Under Texas Property Code, homeowners are typically notified they are a PID when they purchase a home and are subject to an assessment.
That in turn allows developers to issue debt to construct infrasturure, where the assessment goes to pay down that debt.
But homeowners in Bunton Creek, which was created as a PID in Kyle in 2005, claimed they were never notified of any PID assessments.
The resulting furor led to homeowners speaking out to the city, which then filed a lawsuit against PID Holdings in February.
Sellers said the negotiations process was “complicated” but that there was a “lot of give and take.”
“At the end of the day, every party benefits to the ultimate settlement,” Sellers said.
That also extended to a group of Bunton Creek homeowners who filed as an intervening party to the lawsuit in November. Sellers said the homeowners had to approve the settlement prior to it being finalized.
Sellers said the process “took some time” after this became an issue.
“We have been working hard behind the scenes to resolve this issue,” Sellers asid. “I know it can’t be resolved overnight. It’s a somewhat complicated process, but the conclusion is what matters.”
The settlement, along with the creation of a PID policy over the summer, could now open the door for PIDs in the future for the city. Sellers said the PID policy was done to ensure “that these same issues wouldn’t happen again.”
“Now those action items have occurred, the city will most likely receive more PID applications in the future,” Sellers said.
