Board of Aldermen 09-24-2019 Page 27
When she presented the Board with the book she said that they welcomed any questions and | want to
make certain | have the words correct, that she was presenting them with the new procedural manual.
And inside you would find it divided into two sections. | took the time, a week after it was released, it
was put down in the Assessing Office to view and | took the time to go down there, | spent about 2, 2 %
hours down there reviewing the manual and | typed up a paper on it, on what | thought was missing and
what areas thought might have some weaknesses. But what shocked me is that any of the concerns |
raised, and | mean | know | am not liked, but there was nothing in there, absolutely nothing for the
concerns that | addressed. | mean | really think there was nothing.
Policy hearings, one of the things | had asked about months ago, was well if you are going to write
these policies the old manual had no headings, no revisions, no dates, no page numbers. If you are
doing Policies & Procedures you want to have revisions and some way of tracking when they were
activated and what their standing is. So this new manual comes out, there’s none of that. The
Condition and the Grade Issues were not in the book, | started getting very confused. The EYB was not
in the book. The other one was the Ratings on Kitchens & Baths; when we had talked last November,
how do we look at fixtures, how do we look at something that is good, average, fair, excellent. VVhat
are the qualities of a bathroom and kitchen that would give those ratings and that is independent of an
upgrade for AssessPro5. That’s just how the Assessor is looking at this stuff; that wasn’t in there.
Documenting abatements and how we would document abatements on property files; that wasn’t in
there. The percentage increase concern | had, the increase on properties when we would send a letter
home, | did address that | was concerned about using a fixed number because lower income people are
hit harder. A $200,000.00 home is experiencing a 10% increase to have a letter delivered and a
$600,000.00 home is only experiencing a 3% increase and they get a letter. And for people at lower
income notifying them earlier or based on a percentage might be better financially for them. And EYB
and Grade; so | was shocked and | was struggling down there. | was struggling with the manual
because | couldn’t find these things. | kept thinking | was missing them, so | went Friday, | went
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday morning before the Board of Assessor’s meeting | went in for 2
minutes and | asked for the manual. And | stood at the counter and | looked and | realized pages were
missing, were missing little segments of pages are not in the book and they are not in the index; the
EYB, the Grade & Condition, the Bathroom, Total Rooms & Kitchens. Those sections were all missing.
| said to the woman at the counter, | said, “All these pages are missing”. “What?” | said, “There are no
pages so all the information I’ve been looking for isn’t here”. She was shocked and she looked at me
and said, “I don’t know why”. She walked back to an assessor and she said, “All these pages aren’t in
the book” and the Assessor went “Hmmm”.
| come out tonight and | hear Ms. Kleiner mention you know EYB and Condition and stuff are going to
be addressed with AssessPro5. | don’t understand why the Board wasn’t told that and the Board was
presented with this manual as if it was a complete manual. | don’t have any way as a citizen to go and
ask them, “where’s the stuff’ because for me it becomes a Right To Know Request. It goes up to Legal,
it could spend 4 weeks up there, it can get denied because it’s not a document request. This one would
be provide me with the documents. As a matter of fact | wrote 2 Right to Know’s before coming out
here; one to the Board of Assessors and one to Kim Kleiner for all of this missing documentation,
because | have no way of getting it. | can’t ask a question at the desk because they wouldn't tell me the
answer anyway.
But it is just disappointing that you do all of this work and you wait so long and somebody who in charge
of the office goes to the press and says, “All of this is in there, we’ve looked at grade and condition and
what constitutes fair and poor, it’s all in there”. And I’m digging around and | can’t find any of it. | feel
that’s not transparency, that just isn’t transparency for me; that’s shutting the public out, making us run
through hoops, making me work extra hard to try and figure it out. | know that she really dislikes the
public, because in her thanks in the end, there was no recognition of the work that the public has done
to try to help with what’s gone on in Assessing.
