If you live in a part of town with high property values, expect your assessments and your property taxes to be higher. That’s a fairly straight-forward construct.

But in 2011, property owners in the beautiful and costly Groton Long Point community took exception with the methods used by the Town of Groton to determine their assessments, which are based on 70 percent of estimated fair-market value.

In what grew into a class-action lawsuit, covering more than 600 property owners in the affluent peninsula, the plaintiffs claimed the town had arbitrarily inflated their assessments. In a recent ruling, however, Hartford Superior Court Judge Ingrid L. Moll concluded the town used a reasonable formula and that the resulting assessments were not “manifestly excessive.”

Property owners would be tossing good money after bad if they persisted in appealing the decision.

It’s good news for the town and most of its taxpayers if this is the end of it. If the court had ordered the assessments lowered, the town would have been obligated to return any tax overcharges it had collected due to the higher assessments, plus legal fees. That would have cost the town about $4 million at a time it can ill afford it.

The court case dragged on so long that by the time the judge ruled, Groton had gone through another revaluation, in 2016. The town utilized the same professional assessment firm — Tyler Technologies — as in the disputed 2011 revaluation.

This time, however, no massive revolt arose from Groton Long Point. Perhaps homeowners there, having realized that the market value of the homes in the shoreline community continue to rise, decided they did not have much to complain about tax-assessment wise after all.

A review of meeting minutes shows appeals from Groton Long Point property owners to the Board of Assessment Appeals were relatively few. The board heard the appeals in March. In most cases, they found the assessments fair.

When one property owner challenged the $931,140 assessment on her 194 South Shore Road home, the appeals board noted the property was “currently listed on the market at $1,595,000.” It rejected the appeal.

And when a reduction was sought on the $710,710 assessment for 106 East Shore Ave., the board looked at the land values of abutting properties and found “no evidence … the dwelling value was inaccurate.”

Over that conclusion, and that of the judge, no one should be shocked.

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.