The Traverse City Curling Club (TCCC) filed a lawsuit against Garfield Township Friday, alleging the township and its assessor, Polly Cairns, violated the Open Meetings Act (OMA) in their handling of the group’s tax status. The claim relates to a separate clash between the two parties, which have been locked in a Michigan Tax Tribunal battle since last summer. Central to both disputes is a previously-granted property tax exemption from the Township, which TCCC alleges was removed “without prior notice or opportunity to be heard.” The removal of the exemption, coupled with an “unexplained” year-over-year increase in TCCC’s tax valuation, caused the nonprofit’s tax bill to skyrocket.

In 2022, TCCC finalized a deal to purchase the 11-acre former Kmart building and its adjoining parking lot at the Cherryland Center in Garfield Township. The building had sat vacant since 2017, when Sears Holdings Co. announced it was closing. The club converted about 29,000 square feet of the building into a state-of-the-art curling facility, and in 2023 leased another 10,260 square feet to the Traverse City Philharmonic. The redevelopment was helped along by Garfield Township, which approved a Brownfield plan for the property in 2022 after determining the Kmart facility to be “functionally obsolete.”

The relationship between the township and the club has since soured. In July, TCCC petitioned the Michigan Tax Tribunal to “enter an order finding” that its facility “is exempt from taxation” and that Garfield Township committed “qualified errors in the 2024 and 2025 assessments of the parcel.”

“The core problem is our inability to determine the basis for the current township property tax assessment,” explains TCCC President Scott Strouse, sharing with The Ticker recent tax records that he says “illustrate conflicts in square footage, assessed value, and the property’s sale history.”

In 2024, Garfield Township assessed the TCCC facility at a true cash value of approximately $2.9 million and a taxable value of $1.29 million. In 2025, those numbers jumped to more than $12 million and $5.5 million respectively. Strouse says neither bill is accurate, and tells The Ticker that TCCC has spent months trying to answer two key questions: how the property’s supposed “true cash value” jumped by nearly $10 million in a single year; and what happened to TCCC’s tax exemption.

“In 2023, the township approved a property tax exemption,” Strouse says. “This summer, however, we received a new tax bill reflecting a sudden increase of roughly $192,000, raising the total bill to approximately $257,000. We have no understanding why the previously approved property tax exemption was removed.”

A 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a federal income tax exemption since 2014, TCCC first applied for a property tax exemption from Garfield Township in 2023. The exemption was granted and is explicitly referenced in a note from former township assessor Amy DeHaaan on the 2023 tax record card for the property. Under the exemption, TCCC still had to pay property taxes on the unimproved sections of the Kmart building, but not on its own space.

In its tax tribunal petition, TCCC suggests the township might have removed the exemption in error. The nonprofit points back to 2024, when “a Notice of Assessment was issued using a new parcel ID number, increasing the taxable value of the Parcel from $0 to $1,291,080, and the assessed value from $0 to $1,456,900.” The nonprofit theorizes “that the apparent ‘uncapping’ was due to a clerical error in which the property tax exemption granted in 2023 was not transferred to the new Parcel ID.”

A subsequent Notice of Assessment in 2025, which increased the parcel’s taxable value to $5,580,903, cited “Market Adjustment, From Exempt, New Construction” as the reasons for the change. TCCC claims the township never “provided any explanation of what ‘New Construction’ they determined occurred in 2024, or what impact such construction had on the taxable or assessed values.”

Since receiving the summer tax bill in July, Strouse says TCCC has “repeatedly approached the township for clarification and supporting records."

“We were told that a notice and letter had been sent [regarding the removal of our tax exemption], but when we asked for copies or records of those communications, the township could not provide them – and still have not provided them,” Strouse says. “This lack of essential information forced us to file a petition with the Michigan Tax Tribunal to compel disclosure and legally preserve our rights.”

The tax tribunal petition also alleges that Cairns denied TCCC’s right to dispute the tax assessment at a July meeting of the Garfield Township Board of Review – first by “unilaterally remov[ing] the matter from the meeting’s agenda, and then by “physically barr[ing]” TCCC’s representatives from entering the meeting. Those allegations are at the heart of TCCC’s newly-filed OMA lawsuit against Cairns and Garfield Township.

Garfield Township Manager Chris Barsheff declined to comment on behalf of Cairns and the township, referring The Ticker to Garfield’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process. A subsequent FOIA request yielded no record of the township’s decision to suspend TCCC’s tax exemption nor any documentation that TCCC was ever formally notified of that action.

TCCC’s new lawsuit also claims that, prior to a July meeting with Cairns to discuss the summer tax bill, the organization contacted “the former Township Assessor” (DeHaan), “who confirmed that TCCC’s nonprofit exemption had been removed at the request of the prior Township Supervisor” (Chuck Korn, who did not seek re-election for that role in 2024). TCCC believes this alleged conversation between DeHaan and Korn is proof township officials “convened, deliberated, or decided matters” around TCCC’s tax-exempt status outside of public meetings – another possible OMA violation.

Garfield Township denied most of TCCC’s allegations in its written response to the organization’s tax tribunal petition. Regarding the accusation that Cairns physically barred TCCC members from entering a public township meeting, township lawyers wrote “that video security footage captured the event and proves the abject falsity of Petitioner’s allegations…”

Strouse says the tax dispute “has evolved into an existential financial crisis” for TCCC, noting that the organization has “been unable to remit payment on the increased property taxes, not as a matter of principle, but because the funds simply do not exist.”

“As a nonprofit that invested significant time and resources into creating a robust community space, we operate on a lean, carefully balanced budget,” Strouse says. “When a tax bill suddenly increases to $257,000, our operational model cannot absorb that unexpected liability.”