Gail was a family humor columnist for almost a decade for two papers in North Carolina. She was a local version of Erma Bombeck, a national family humor columnist four decades ago. During the first half of her columnist career we lived in Greenville, NC, where I was the County's Tax Assessor. The odd thing is that this actually worked out because people could read about (usually slightly exaggerated) events in our lives and laugh at them (often, really, at me).
There was one time when the State had just rewritten all of the property tax laws and the new wording for exemptions from real property taxes changed the basis for an exemption. As a result, I went through each exempt property record to decide if they still qualified, then notified anyone now outside the exemption definition that the property would now be taxed. My decisions could always be appealed to the Board of County Commissioners. Since I'd sent out perhaps fifty notices of loss of exemption, it could be expected that there would be objections to my decisions.
The good news was that Gail published the column quoted below just after I mailed out the notices (published with permission from The Greenville Daily Reflector).
Appraising Opportunities (Sunday, September 8st, 1974)
My husband likes to say that here are two things in life which are inevitable: death and taxes. He also likes to say that secure jobs make happy people. So, I guess when he found his success at selling cemetery plots was minimal, he settled for the next best job—tax supervisor.
However, there is one pitfall in this job. Tax supervisors are about as popular as the measles. Everyone seems to think Phillip spends his off-hours sitting over piles of their money, leering evilly as he gurgles, "Mine, all mine!" Even his parents think so. When we announced his new job, the atmosphere was the same as if Hugh Hefner had just crashed a Women's Lib meeting. His mother wailed, "Where did we go wrong?" His father stared at him accusingly and said, "And to think you were once an Eagle Scout." That was the last thing he said to him for two months.
I do think that we had verbal contact with his father during that period, although he'll never acknowledge it. Every night for two weeks after the tax bills went out, an anonymous caller who sounded remarkably like my father-in-law called our house. His only words each time were, "God'll get you for this."
God did. The legislature passed a bill stating all unused church property was taxable. My husband dutifully sent out letters informing all churches in Pitt County of the change in the law. The Sunday after those letters were sent out, our minister preached a sermon on Zacchaeus, and he stared at Phillip throughout the whole thing.
It didn't ruffle Phillip a bit. He sat calmly throughout the church service, smiling and solicitously checking my pulse every few minutes while I ate half a hymnal. When everyone knelt for the final prayer, I left my shoes behind and wriggled under the pews and out of the church.
I was hiding in the bushes, waiting for Phillip to exit, when I realized he was right above me on the top step. Before I could grab his ankle and pull him down, I heard him shout, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's."
I was lucky enough' to catch two of the shoes thrown at him. One was size 3 and the other size 11, but, at that moment, I wasn't particularly choosy. I put a toe in the size 3 and half a leg in the size 11 and hobbled home, leaving my eloquent husband to his own devices.
That was last year. Sadly enough, billing season has rolled around once more. Happily enough, Phillip is still alive to supervise it.
Surprisingly enough, we were invited to a party the day after the bills went out. I made Phillip promise not to reveal his identity to anyone we happened to meet for the first time.
"But what am I going to say if someone asks me what I do?" he asked. "Shall I tell them that I work with the county?"
"No," I answered. "That's not specific enough. How about fund-raising?"
We had still not agreed on a reasonable answer when we got to the party. Our hostess grabbed us and steered us away from the guests we knew. "I want you to meet my neighbor, Zelda," she said.
"Oh. hello," gushed the unsuspecting Zelda. "What do you do, Mr. Michaels?"
"I'm in real estate appraisal," smirked my husband.
"Why that's wonderful. We just built a new addition to our house. I wonder if you'd appraise it for us sometimes." "Oh. I'm sure I will." I don't know if I can stand another year of this.
After the column was published (and people could chuckle at my public embarrassment) no one appealed to the County board about it.
In an odd way, however, there was some actual good that came out of the exempt properties review for the community--over and above a tiny increase in the real property tax base. My sister, Marty, told me a couple of months later that she and a group in her area were thinking about starting a new church. It was easy to see that this was a big undertaking, but I knew it was only a matter of time before the bells on their new church would be ringing, such is the reality of my sister’s perseverance. So, I didn't hesitate to offer friendly, free, and effortless (on my part) brotherly advice on the project.
It turned out that in the review of exempt properties I'd turned down the exemption of a small abandoned church about four miles (as the crow flies) from her neighborhood and now Marty’s denomination would be paying taxes on it. After I told her about it the next thing I knew the church had been moved, renovated, and occupied by the new congregation. I guess it just goes to show that the likelihood of success of an idea depends completely on the hands one puts it in.
Previous Postings: