Class Action

Victor Harding says he’s tired of subsidizing the Milwaukee Country Club.

Harding, a lawyer and River Hills resident, feels the chichi country club’s property is grossly underassessed. This will be a key part of his platform when he runs for the River Hills Board of Trustees in April, he promises.

Prestige and private are words synonymous with the Milwaukee Country Club. Located on 196 acres of land abutting the Milwaukee River, the club was built in 1894 by the area’s most prominent business leaders, decades before River Hills became a village.

The property is currently assessed for tax purposes at around $6.28 million.

That’s ridiculous, says Harding: “River Hills requires a 5-acre minimum for residential lots. A 5-acre lot would sell for at least $500,000.” And since the club property could be carved into around 39 such lots, Harding insists its real value is upward of $20 million.

Club officials contend it’s closer to 35 lots, since some of the land is flood plain and unbuildable. They also say the cost of razing the existing buildings would have to be deducted from the assessment. They place the worth of each lot closer to $100,000.

Some say this is a class issue in Milwaukee’s classiest suburb, a dispute between the haves and the have-a-lots. The 400 members, who have an average age of 60, spend more than $1 million a year dining at the club and another $500,000 at the bars, according to the most recent federal tax form. The club’s French-born-and-trained chef, Olivier Bidard, is celebrated for his creative culinary skills. The olive oil is imported from Mas Des Bories in France. The club even boasts separate grills for the men’s and women’s locker rooms.

Then there’s the club’s golf course. “It’s a course few people can say they’ve played,” Mark King wrote in Travel + Leisure. Jim Flick, the world-renowned instructor, lists the MCC course as “one of the top five in the world.” Golf Digest is considerably less generous, listing it as the 48th-best private club in the U.S., but one of the 10 best-maintained.
Never mind all the amenities, says Harding, it’s a matter of basic fairness.

The village’s valuation of the property has bounced around more than a Tiger Woods tee shot. In 1991, it was assessed at $6.18 million, almost double that of 1990. The next year, its lawyers successfully appealed the assessment, and it dropped to $4.9 million in 1992. By 1994, the assessed value had plummeted to $3.8 million.

The biggest controversy erupted in 2004, when a villagewide reassessment set the value at $4.94 million.

Dorothy Dean, then the Milwaukee County treasurer, asked for a change in state law that would allow her to mount a legal challenge of assessments that seemed out of line. She calculated the average Milwaukee County homeowner was paying a nickel more in taxes because the club was not paying enough. The state’s Department of Revenue reviewed the assessment and concluded the fair market value was $7.7 million – almost 60 percent more than the village’s assessment.

Country clubs, golf courses and other unusual properties are notoriously difficult to value, and disparities exist statewide, says Jessica Iverson, a spokesperson for the Department of Revenue. The recent state budget bill instructs Iverson’s department to study the potential to create a countywide assessment program in all 72 counties, something talked about since the 1970s.

“The process we are looking at is to make assessments more equitable and make sure no one is paying more than their fair share of taxes,” Iverson says. “There is an issue of disparity.”

Exactly, says Harding, as he plans his anti-country club campaign.