Diamondhead's largest landowner wants to undo the county court order conferring municipal status on the Garland County side of the gated community.
Mark Lane filed a complaint to enjoin the incorporation Monday in Garland County Circuit Court and reverse County Judge Darryl Mahoney's March 1 order granting incorporation. Lane is the principal of Omni Home Builders, the Colorado company that acquired 1,600 lots, including more than 900 on the Garland County side, for $2.4 million in 2018, according to property records.
Lane is listed as the plaintiff and isn't represented by an attorney. The respondents are listed as members of the committee that organized the petition to incorporate. The filing cited concerns Mahoney raised in his order about the new city's wherewithal to deliver basic services, such as police protection and road maintenance.
Population-based shares of sales taxes the county levies for roads and bridges and in support of its general and solid waste funds, along with state turnback money, are revenues an incorporated Diamondhead would be entitled to.
"It will be a number of years before the city will have enough revenue from sales taxes and other sources to pay for things such as police and fire services," Lane argued in the complaint. " ... The petitioners have not presented, nor can they present, a proposed budget that reasonably demonstrates the city's ability, at the time of incorporation, to meet all of the attendant financial needs and to properly serve its residents."
About 1,400 people live in Diamondhead, according to testimony petitioners gave at hearings to incorporate. The county clerk's office testified last month that signatures in support of the most recent petition exceeded 330, or half the number of Diamondhead residents registered to vote in Garland County. The law requires signatures of either 200 registered voters or a majority of the registered voters residing in the area proposed for incorporation.
Mahoney said his concerns notwithstanding, community support for incorporation was his ultimate rationale for granting the petition. He noted the lack of opposition at the Feb. 12 hearing. Property Owners Association Board of Directors President Dan Dickerson told The Sentinel-Record earlier this month that the board wasn't informed of the hearing. He's one of four directors Lane appointed.
Bylaws that resulted from court-ordered settlement talks gave Omni four board seats. The POA membership elected four directors, with a majority of the board electing the ninth director. The membership's adoption of the new governing structure in an August 2022 election released both sides from claims they had filed in circuit court.
Soon after the new structure was in place, the board disbanded the police force in January 2023, telling its membership that maintaining police protection was no longer financially feasible.
Byron Efird, one of the leaders of the incorporation committee who is named as a respondent in the lawsuit Lane filed Monday, said incorporation is a "win-win" for the POA membership and Omni. The committee has said absent new revenues that flow from incorporation, the POA would have to raise its annual dues of about $1,300.
"At the end of the day, everybody wants what's best for Diamondhead," Efird said earlier this month. "One of the ways we can obtain a better Diamondhead is to have more money coming in. It's going to do nothing but help Omni. If (Lane) wants to sell lots, let's make a better community where he can sell more lots and build more houses."
Lane told POA members in 2022 that their lawsuit adversely affected Omni's ability to sell lots, explaining that more than 100 new homes would've been built if not for the litigation.
Omni's tree cutting put it at odds with some of the membership soon after it became Diamondhead's largest landowner. Lane told the community he was "select cutting" to give developers a better sense of the terrain, but property owners said the activity was more akin to clear-cutting. Omni agreed to pay a civil penalty for violating the Clean Water Act, according to the agreement it reached with the state Division of Environmental Quality in 2022.
DEQ said Omni was logging without the required permits and in a manner that could release stormwater into the Lake Catherine watershed.