My assessment of the assessor’s remodeling job

“If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street. If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat.”

–from “Taxman,” by The Beatles.

Wednesday morning took me to the Spokane County assessor’s office.

I wasn’t there to be assessed, thank God, so I didn’t have to disrobe, put on a paper hospital gown and bend over with all the other taxpayers.

I came to say howdy to Assessor Ralph Baker and to check out the new extreme makeover that has transformed his courthouse office from shabby to chic.

The assessor’s office was once the typical drab bureaucratic hellhole. Now it’s cozy enough for a property owner to curl up for a night or two after being assessed out of his home.

This is quite a switch.

In December, Assessor Baker made Grinchlike news when he ordered chairs removed from his waiting room, instructed employees to spend less time meeting with property owners and “installed a new voice mail system that makes it almost impossible for callers to actually reach an appraiser by phone.”

In short, Baker was behaving exactly like an assessor.

Personally, I find this approach refreshing. Honesty in government should be encouraged.

Snivelers, however, accused Baker of not being a people person.

Go figure.

So to create an illusion of warmth and hospitality, the assessor’s office has been fitted with fabric couches, comfy chairs and workstations with glowing computers.

The place is so inviting that a customer actually dozed off the other day at one of the computer cubbyholes.

Of course, when the poor sap woke up he discovered he’d been dinged an additional 23 percent on his double-wide.

The assessor’s office remodel isn’t done yet. Lights with glass amber shades will soon be installed. Artwork is on the way. A print of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” would be the perfect tax office touch, if you ask me.

The new décor is a blend of soothing earth tones. Presumably, this will help keep the overassessed masses from going postal.

It hasn’t been a good tax season for Joe Property Owner.

Last year’s county assessments averaged out to the payment of a homeowner’s firstborn child. This year’s tax average is somewhat friendlier, hovering right around the removal of a kidney or a spleen.

But what we taxpayers often forget during our moments of hyperventilation, migraine headaches and blind drooling rage is that the county assessor is a person, too.

OK. Let’s say he is for the sake of argument, anyway.

Baker didn’t follow the usual career path to tax assessment: i.e. stealing lunch money from the other school kids, pulling the wings off hummingbirds, cannibalism, telemarketing …

The assessor has a solid background in financial advising. He also served in the Air Force.

Our Air Force, presumably.

And best of all, Baker appears to have a sense of humor about his work.

For example: He told me he had been a deputy tax assessor. And then I said, “Isn’t that a mouse training to be a rat?”

And then, well, I think that made him smile.

Or maybe it was an indigestion-induced grimace.

“Go for it,” Baker encouraged me. “Have a good time at my expense.”

We aim to please.

Rarely a day passes without Baker getting an earful from some steamed member of the public.

“This freaking sucks. A 52-percent increase in taxes is outrageous. …” wrote a taxpayer in a recent letter. “The f-ing county shoud (sic) be ashamed.”

You’re definitely not Mr. Popularity when you’re Spokane County assessor.

“My motto is: I had a friend once,” said the taxman.