Allie Beth Allman, the Queen of Highland Park

texasmonthly.com

11 points·wallflower··6 comments

The article doesn’t really mention it, but having a house in Highland Park is also a tax dodge. It has some of the lowest property taxes in north Texas. It’s practically part of Dallas, but the property taxes are lower than Dallas proper.

Eh, I haven’t looked this up for Highland Park specifically, but I’m familiar with a number of other enclave cities in Texas with similar demographics, and the property tax rate is lower because the property values are so much higher.

Plus rather than providing services over a couple hundred square miles, the enclave cities provide services to a compact area comprising a handful of square miles.

No one is living in Highland Park to dodge taxes.

I would agree it’s not the main reason why people live there. The separate school district is probably a bigger factor.

My grandparents rented half of a duplex in University Park instead of buying a house in an otherwise nice Dallas neighborhood in the 50s in order to send my mother and aunt to Highland Park schools when they first moved from Lubbock, on the advice of my grandfather's new colleagues - and this was long before Texas begrudgingly started de-segregating schools, so it's been that way for at least 70 years now.

Oh, absolutely. It’s a suburban quality ISD with big city amenities. It’s a very good combo for the folks that live there.

And police force, who are not burdened by the demands / low staffing DPD are.

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