Compass Lake residents ask for county’s help

Some property owners at Compass Lake in the Hills have petitioned the Jackson County Commission for changes in the ordinance which governs the Municipal Services Taxing Unit, or MSTU, in their subdivision.

Commissioners on Tuesday agreed to revisit the document, but said they may not be able to do anything about what’s really bothering the petitioners.

The group wants the commission to help them do away with the one-lot, one-vote structure of the Property Owners Association in the Hills.

County attorney Frank Baker advised the commission Tuesday that the county really has no right to interfere with the inner workings of what is essentially a private entity.

The relationship between the POA, the county and the MSTU is sometimes murky in the minds of those who live in the community.

The commission’s interests in the matter, Baker said, are restricted and the county has a limited role. It has a contractual arrangement with the POA, in which the POA board of directors manages the budget generated by the MSTU.

The POA also presents the county with a budget proposal at the beginning of each fiscal year. Although the commission is not obligated to adopt it, the MSTU ordinance states that the county will at least hear it.

For many years, the county adopted the POA’s proposed budget without much challenge.

However, growing unrest in the community about how the money is spent led commissioners to take a more active role in recent years. This year, the county also considered and eventually adopted an alternative budget, one presented by those opposing the POA directors’ proposed budget.

The petitioners, represented Tuesday by Ron Wilson, want the county to strike the language calling for commission to hear POA-submitted budgets.

But their issues go farther than that.

The petitioners say the POA’s one-lot, one-vote rule is making the lives of single-lot owners unbearable.

According to them, absentee owners with multiple lots have motives against the interests of the community as a whole, and are able to control things by voting in blocks on a multitude of issues.

Baker pointed out that all those who bought property in the subdivision bough with full knowledge of the POA’s voting structure. More importantly for the county, though, he said the government does not have a role in how the entity governs itself.