When Sandra Wilson sold her townhouse near downtown Dallas and moved to Josephine, a small city 40 miles outside the metroplex, she looked forward to quieter streets and cheaper taxes.
Then she got her first property tax bill. “I came unglued,” she said.
Wilson, who is 71 and retired, was aware when she bought her new home that it was in a municipal utility district, or MUD, and that she would have to pay a special tax. But what she didn’t know was how much that tax would be — more than $2,400 annually, double what she paid to the county — nor that she would be charged it essentially indefinitely…