Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 120
estimated tax receipts, calculated at a reasonable rate that the market could bear,
determine the amount of investment possible.
This is a fair way of paying for these improvements because it removes the risk of a
potential subdivision failure from the taxpayers within the city and puts it all on the backs
of the property owners within the MUD, who also stand to be the main beneficiaries.
The lawyers taught me the many legal, political, financial and physical tests that had to
be fulfilled before I could form such a district, but the most daunting was the minimum
size of development that could justify the economics of a bond issue. It turned out that
our measly 76 acres was not enough to merit attention. We had to enlarge our holdings
by a factor of at least five. My dream of owning a complicated multidisciplinary project
and to have a view from the top was at hand, but now it left me dumbfounded.
Faced with no other alternative, we set about buying adjoining land. Bill Adkins, PhD, a
partner in Braver, was also a teacher of real estate economics at Texas A&M and had
been involved in land syndications in the past. He put together a couple of investment
groups and acquired control of additional acreage. We also needed a few voters in the
district so that they could elect a board of directors empowered to prepare and pass the
bond issue. Our solution was to buy left over acreage and some remaining lots of an
adjoining rural subdivision and to bring in three adjacent homeowners as the first
residents of our MUD. While we were working single mindedly to put the basics in place,
our bank began to feel jittery and announced its intent to revoke its loan commitment.
We already owed significant amounts to lawyers, consulting engineers, surveyors,
market analysts, testing laboratories, financial advisors and other professionals.
Fortunately most of them had agreed to contracts making our obligation to pay them
contingent on the bonds being floated.
Some of the engineering needed by Braver was bought from CGL who, in a rare
reversal of the usual flow of technical support, sent us designers and surveyors from
Bolivia. Through the new MUD, we built our own sewage treatment plant but did not drill
any water wells. As part of our feasibility plan, we negotiated a contract with the City of
Bryan to buy bulk water at a delivery point about 2.5 miles away. We agreed to build the
main line at our cost and let the city tap into it for intermediary users. We also agreed to
pay for the water at 1.5 times the in-city rates. This was a pretty good and immediate
demonstration of the added value we were bringing to the city.
Finally by January 1975, a year after I arrived, we were able to fulfill all the requirements
- economic, financial, legal, technical, social, political and institutional that were
necessary to be a viable MUD. On February 25, 1975, the State of Texas officially
created Brazos County Municipal District #1, (BCMUD1) comprising 360 acres and
having six voters (three couples) within its boundaries. My good friend Vaughn Bryant,
Ph.D., a professor at TAMU and prolific anthropology researcher and writer had, to do
me a favor, bought one of the neighboring lots that we had included in the MUD. As a
property owner he was qualified to hold office. He was elected president, a non-
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