Horton, meanwhile, notes she’s the only candidate with appraiser experience, and she wants to restore trust with the county by improving communication. Jackson highlights his engineering perspective and outside perspective and says he’d like to create a topographical map to plot appraiser progress. Since assessments follow one year behind the real-estate market, Baker believes the tumultuous market may have produced the complaints.Today, Mason campaigns for Andrew Jackson, one of Baker’s opponents. On McKenzie’s website, she showcases how dramatically the number of appeals - property owners challenging their assessments - have ratcheted up over Baker’s tenure, from 974 in 2005 to 2,023 in 2008, to 3,003 in 2010. The number of complaints from citizens has gone up. But that’s the employees’ fault, not Baker’s. Everybody got a pay raise … Everybody’s got outstanding benefits.”Ĭurrent appraiser Valerie McMillan says, yes, morale is low. “Most of the people in the Assessor’s Office are very happy. (Baker says the Department of Revenue study testifies to his system’s accuracy.) But the computer algorithms give odd results, he says - one house may plunge 20 percent in value, while the house next door may increase 20 percent in value. Under Baker’s tenure, Chambers says, computer programs became almost the exclusive way to calculate property values. “If he was given advice, he normally took the opposite of what was given,” Chambers says of Baker. The harshest criticism, however, comes from Dave Chambers, who left the office for a job with Avista Utilities. They all say they opted for early retirement partly because of the office climate. Barbara Kent worked for the Assessor’s Office for 32 years, Dick Schomburg for 28 and Bill Pierce for 19.
“That’s exactly what we get with Ralph Baker.”īut at least nine employees, Mason says, quit in frustration. “, ‘I want less government, I want more efficient government, I want my taxes reduced,’” Baker says. Baker says it was part of a large staff reorganization, not retaliation.īaker is proud he has reduced the size of his office by 22 percent over the years. Mason quit after she was reassigned under the supervision of the very person she’d accused of fraud.