This is a very old argument that has rarely been won by privately owned courses. I run and own a public course. The City owns a much older muni that they are forced to subsidize with tax dollars, smoke and mirrors accounting, no property taxes, and many of the practices cited above like free golf for local pols and other department heads. So, yes, when my course was developed, we knew the competition. Not much need to tell you where I stand in this discussion. A few years ago the county (I border the city limits) tripled my property taxes. I appealed citing many of these same arguments. Some old, thirty-year veteran commissioner told me: “In all my years in this post, Dave, that was the most interesting and well prepared appeal I’ve heard…rejected.”
The issue boiled down to how golf courses were appraised. In my view, the appraisal model was flawed, not based on our local economy, and greatly influenced by building costs of real estate driven courses, resorts, CCFAD’s, and, of course, much different land acquisition costs. By state law, appraisals have to be at least 90% of comparable properties. I was able to convince the appraiser to base his appraisal on an income or revenue analysis instead of a national formula found in his appraisal manual. In other words, the analysis be based on the property taxes paid by other local businesses and compared to all local golf properties, except the muni. I then submitted my financial statements to the appraiser, called every private or privately owned public course, for profit and non-profit, and convinced them to do the same. The other courses sent in their numbers, with the condition that this financial information would be used internally and confidentially by the appraisers. No owner or club got to see any of their competition’s info. Some courses were in neighboring counties, so some coordinating between these different government entities was needed. However, the result was more of an apples-to-apples comparative analysis. All of our property taxes were reduced by 30 to 50%.
I don’t know if this approach would work anywhere else. Laws differ in every state or locality. Also, this is a mostly middle class rural area (Idaho). We have public courses, privately owned public courses, and equity country clubs. However, most offer affordable golf and, except for the muni, are priced fairly competitively. It may illustrate nothing more than businesses standing together and challenging unfair taxation. We all still have to compete with the tax subsidized local muni which is very popular and has many loyal players. We all have to do this by offering a better product. We all are very thankful that the muni is a crappy little course, but a good place for players to learn the game. Almost all golfers don't give a damn about architecture. That may be a good thing for the muni. That place is an resonably conditioned, architectural eyesore.