Three years back Realtor Jeff Duffy wondered how in the hell could the Dallas Country Club, more than 100 acres nestled within Highland Park, be worth a mere $10 million according to the Dallas Central Appraisal District: "Do country clubs fall under the church and school categories when it comes to property taxes? Am I missing something here?" Well, yes: As Wick Allison noted in D last year, "The Dallas Country Club is privileged to sit on 118 very valuable acres that are now tax-exempt as real property." Which means, as the HP-home-owning magazine's publisher put it, folks like him "subsidize racial discrimination."

Now, jump to this morning: DCAD's finally upped the valuation of the country club ... to a whole $15 million. Which, it insists, is "an amount in excess of the appraised value required by law," according to court docs I stumbled across on the Dallas County website that were filed not two hours ago. According to Addison attorney Kathleen Donovan, the country club, whose golf course just underwent a major overhaul, protested the valuation back in May, but the review board wasn't having it. Hence, the lawsuit, which reads, in part:

The value placed on the Property represents a value in excess of fair market value. The appraised value is unfair and discriminatory, arrived at through the adoption, application, use and enforcement of a fundamentally erroneous and unlawful plan, method and formula of valuation and assessment.

Plaintiff alleges that the adoption and use of such a fundamentally erroneous and unlawful plan for establishing the appraised value of the Property has resulted in a substantially excessive valuation in violation of the Constitution, Property Tax Code and Statutes of the State of Texas which provide that no property shall be assessed at a value greater than its market value.

Plaintiff alleges that the value placed on the Property is based upon an appraisal method which is antiquated, unfair, and erroneous and which does not take into account all relevant factors and indicators of market value, and that the appraisal so made is void, unlawful and should be cancelled and set aside.

Read the whole thing on the other side.

Dallas Country Club v Dallas Central Appraisal District

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