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STREET ACCEPTANCE PLAN & PROFILE

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ADELAIDE AVENUE

KIRKPATRICK VILLAGE

NASHUA, NEW HAMPSHIRE

PREPARED FOR

ETCHSTONE PROPERTIES, INC.

129 AMHERST STREET NASHUA, NEW HAMPSHIRE 03084 (603) 889-5208

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2 OCTOBER 2017

Civil Baginsers/Land Surveyors
Cangross Street Nushos, New Hampakire OM062-3301
Tel (G09 B8F-2057 Fax (603) 8835057
werw.Asymerpwanses.com

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@hHoymer/Swonaan, Inc.

PETITION FOR STREET ACCEPTANCE

TO THE HONORABLE BOARD OF ALDERMEN OF THE CITY OF NASHUA

Pursuant to the Nashua Revised Ordinance, Chapter 19, Section 19-34, the undersigned requests that the
following described portion of:
Pendant Lane

to be accepted for public use and maintenance:

A certain parcel of land situated in the City of Nashua, County of Hillsborough, State of New Hampshire,
bounded and described as follows:

Beginning at a stone bound in the north line of Adelaide Avenue at the southwest corner of the within
described parcel; thence

Northeasterly along a curve to the left having a radius of 25.00 feet, a delta angle of 90°01’40” and an
arc length of 39.28 feet to a stone bound; thence

N15°19’00’W a distance of 39.24 feet to a stone bound; thence

Northwesterly along a curve to the left having a radius of 25.00 feet, a delta angle of 53°58’05” and an
arc length of 23.55 feet to a stone bound; thence

Northwesterly, easterly and southwesterly along a curve to the right having a radius of 60.00 feet, a
delta angle of 287°56’10” and an arc length of 301.53 feet to a stone bound; thence

Southerly along a curve to the left having a radius of 25.00 feet, a delta angle of 53°58’05” and an arc
length of 23.55 feet to a stone bound; thence

$15°19’00”E a distance of 39.29 feet to a stone bound; thence

Southeasterly along a curve to the left having a radius of 25.00 feet, a delta angle of 89°58’20” and an
arc length of 39.26 feet to a stone bound on the north line of Adelaide Avenue; thence

$74°42’40"W by said north line of Adelaide Avenue a distance of 100.00 feet to the point of beginning.

Meaning and intending to describe Pendant Lane as shown on plan entitled “Lot Line
Relocation/Subdivision Plan, Adelaide Avenue, Nashua, New Hampshire”, Record Owners: Kirkpatrick
Family Trust, William R. Kirkpatrick, Il] & Jonn E. Kirkpatrick, Trs., William R., Ill & Jane M. Kirkpatrick and
The Heirs of Mary Elizabeth Kelly, William R. Kirkpatrick, Jr., Dorothy Eccles & Ruth Walker., prepared by
Hayner/Swanson, Inc., recorded in the HCRD as Plan #38511.

Also shown on plan entitled “Street Acceptance Plan and Profile, Pendant Lane, Kirkpatrick Village”
prepared by Hayner/Swanson, Inc., and on file at the City of Nashua Engineering Department.

v

PETITIONS/ STREET ACCEPTANCE: ) { IFA
iolva {ig ( w/ \, \ ps
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DATE PETTIONER

|, certify that | have received a mylar showing the limits of the street to be accepted and that said street
has been constructed in accordance with the approved plan.

rol 14 | 201 & ADI. 2

DATE CITY ENGINEER

Petitioner introduced at Board of Aldermen Meeting

Public Hearing conducted by the Committee on Infrastructure:

DATE TIME PLACE

Notice of this hearing was sent out to all abutters of that portion of the street for which acceptable was
requested, as listed on the attached list.

The foregoing petitions was granted, by the Board of Aldermen and Mayor on

DATE

Attest:

NATE CITV CLERY

Jim Donchess
Mayor e City of Nashua

To: Board of Aldermen

From: Jim Donchess

Date: 4/8/16

Re: Contract Award for Amherst St Improvements-Charron Ave to Diesel Road

Pursuant to NRO § 5-90 (E} which states that approval by the Finance Committee of a contract award in
excess of $1,000,000 shall be submitted to the full Board of Aldermen at its next regularly scheduled
meeting for final approval prior to award of the contract, please consider the following. The Finance
Committee approved the purchase of the below referenced contract at their April 6, 2016 meeting. |
request the Board of Aldermen’s concurrence and approval for this purchase.

Amherst St Improvements-Charron Ave to Diesel Road — Attached please find Purchasing Manager’s Memo
# 16-123 regarding this contract.

229 Main Street « PO Box 2019 * Nashua, New Hampshire 03061-2019
603.589.3260 + fax 603.594.3450 + NashuaMayor'd:NashuaNH.gzov
www. NashuaNl gov

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A special meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Thursday, March 7, 2019, at 7:00 p.m. in the
Aldermanic Chamber.

President Lori Wilshire presided; City Clerk Patricia Piecuch recorded.

Prayer was offered by City Clerk Patricia Piecuch; Alderman-at-Large Michael B. O’Brien, Sr. led in the Pledge
to the Flag.

The roll call was taken with 11 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman Gidge, Alderman Schmait
and Alderman Lopez were recorded absent. Alderman Harriott-Gathright arrived after roll call (7:10 p.m.)

His Honor, Mayor James W. Donchess, and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance. We
also have with us this evening CFO John Griffin and Chief of Staff Kim Kleiner.

President Wilshire

Alderman Lopez did inform me that he was unable to be here this evening.

COMMUNICATIONS

From: Lori Wilshire, President, Board of Aldermen
Re: Special Board of Aldermen Meeting

There being no objection, President Wilshire accepted the communication and placed it on file.
MANAGEMENT AUDIT REPORT FOR THE ASSESSING DEPARTMENT DATED MARCH 1, 2019
President Wilshire

At this point | will turn it over to you Mayor.

Mayor Donchess

Thank you very much Madam President. We are here tonight, and as you said | am here with CFO Griffin and
Ms. Kleiner to present the audit of the Assessing Department which was initiated earlier this year and was
completed recently. | think you all got copies of the written audit maybe last Friday via e-mail and | assume
you've at least had a chance to look at it. | think what the audit sets forth is a number of steps that we can take,
hopefully in the immediate future, to streamline and improve our assessing function. If some of these steps, you
as the Board of Aldermen need to approve, we hope that you will do that with dispatch, so that we can begin as
quickly as possible undertaking the various improvements that are outlined in the audit.

Mr. Griffin and Ms. Kleiner are going to talk about more of the details but | thought | would take a few moments
to kind of set the stage for what we are talking about. First the audit was done of the Assessing Department in
Nashua. The Assessing Department did not do the recent revaluation; that was done by KRT. Because of
issues that we had identified actually together, we discussed this when the money was appropriated to bring
KRT in, we decided to go outside the City for the evaluation to engage an expert assessing firm, KRT, who had
extensive experience in New England and in New Hampshire to do the work. There were various reasons for
that and | believe it was the right decision because the work that they did, | think the facts show are very sound.
They have come up with a very consistent set of results and they did a very thorough job. They visually
inspected every property; now of course they did not go into the properties, but they visually inspected every
property. Working with the personnel office in terms of identify any discrepancies that are visually apparent
from the outside of the building, because Lynn in the Assessing Office routinely reviews photographs to
determine if there is anything visible on the outside that is not in the property records, | think they were able to

Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 2

certainly identify any errors that might have existed with respect to the external portions of the structures, the
size, the decks and all that.

We have received about 250 or something less than 300 abatement requests. This is a typical number for the
revaluations that have been done over the years. As you know this was a State-ordered revaluation; the State
Law says that every City and Town has to do one every 5 years. This was conducted in 2018 and the last
revaluation was in 2013. So the number of abatement requests that the City has received is typical for the last
few, except that in 2005 which was several revaluations ago there were 1,500 abatement requests at that time.
And when the last full measure and list was done which was in the early 90’s, I’m not sure of the number, but
there were a lot, a lot more than 300. So | don’t think that anything out of the ordinary has occurred with respect
to people seeking, thinking or believing that their new assessment is incorrect and seeking a review of the
decision through the process that is available to them which is of course the Board of Assessors then to the
Board of the Land & Tax Appeals at the State Level or the Superior Court.

Of course everybody has a right to file an abatement and anybody who disagrees with their assessment
hopefully will have done that. Certainly reasonable people can often disagree about what an assessment is; it is
a science but not an exact one, especially when we are talking about more properties that are more unique,
properties that aren’t exactly like the house or the condo next door. There are often good faith disagreements
about what assessment should be and that is the reason for the appeal process; so that someone who is
outside the City or outside the Assessing Office and ultimately outside the City can review the facts and
determine what the proper assessment, at least in their judgement, should be.

There are a number of | think significant recommendations made in the audit. One of those involve, and you'll
get the details from Mr. Griffin and Ms. Kleiner, but the larger ones that | thought were worth mentioning myself
are as you know, the audit recommended that we eliminate the Chief Assessor position and instead return to
the system of, and | will discuss this in a little more detail, of having many of the departments in City Hall that
work together, run by a new administrative services director. The Administrative Services Director is a position
that was first established during the administration of Maurice Arel in the late 70’s to help bring more effective
management to City Hall Departments. The City Administrative Services Director as the audit recommends
would oversee a number of internal functions as it did before, Assessing, Personnel, Purchasing, Risk, the City
Clerk and others that are within City Departments, GIS, IT. The Administrative Services Director was a position
in City Government through the Administration of Maurice Arel, through my first administration, through Wagner,
Davidson and Streeter.

Then Mayor Lozeau early in her tenure decided that at least in the way she wanted to run City Government, this
was not a necessary position and she preferred to have something called City Stat and the Administrative
Services position was removed and instead a City Stat Director was established. Then after a few years,
apparently it was decided that City Stat was not necessary and for cost savings measures that position was
removed. But the Administrative Services Director was not re-established. Now the people who have served in
that position over the years have tended to be people who know City Government very well, but who have had a
business background or some management background. The first Administrative Services Director who served
for some period of time was Russ Marcoux who had been on the Board of Aldermen, he had worked for Purity
Supreme and had an accounting background. He moved on and later Maureen Lemieux came in as
Administrative Services Director after having served | think a short time on the Board of Aldermen, someone
with another business accounting background. Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja probably knows her from Ward 8.
She served with | think very great skill for quite a while, but when the position was phased out, she took a job as
CFO | believe for the City of Newton, Massachusetts and still works there and very successfully.

So that is the history of the position. The point here is to, and | will address the assessing function in a minute,
but the point is, at least of what we proposed now, is a few things. Number one, all of these functions needs to
work effectively together, IT, Assessing, GIS, the Building & Planning people as well. These are people who
need to work together in order for City Government to function most effectively. When the Administrative
Services Position was eliminated, all of these functions were transferred to the CFO, in our case Mr. Griffin. The

Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 3

problem with that is that the CFO’s primary responsibility is to manage the finances of the City; to do the budget,
to manage the annual audit that takes place, to do the so-called CAFA which is the Annual Financial Report, to
generate all the financial reports, to pay the bills, to do all of the financial functions that a City of this sizes
requires. And when these extra responsibilities beyond really what a CFO should be doing were transferred to
Mr. Griffin, the CFO, | think it was intended as a kind of a temporary fix, but it became permanent. | know he
wasn’t particularly looking for this and it put him in a position where he could not give sufficient time and
attention to these additional functions that were placed under his responsibility because still his primary job is all
the financial work and the budget and the other things that I’ve mentioned.

| think as you have seen him come before you over the years on the budget issues and financial issues that
often come to the Board of Aldermen, you understand that he is very capable as a financial manager and as a
financial planner. But think putting all of this under the CFO was in retrospect a mistake and really the
Administrative Services Director is a position and responsibility that we should return to. So the two personnel
recommendations that the audit recommends is the elimination of the one job and the creation of the other
which is a basically cost neutral transition because the salary for an Administrative Services Director might be
slightly higher but is approximately equivalent to what the Assessing Manager made which is more than
$100,000.00.

Now you could ask, well how would the City function without an Assessing Manager? Well first of all, the
Administrative Services Director would now take much more direct responsibility and involvement in the
Assessing function. Number two, there is a supervisor assessor, certified as a supervisor in the Assessing
Office who can serve as sort of a working supervisor. And number three, as we all move forward on this project
together, if we think that we need more fire power, more expertise in the Assessing Office, we can contract with
an outside firm to provide some degree of assessing oversight. Now this is not actually a new idea; when Brian
McCarthy was still with us and when he was president we, on several occasions, talked about the possibility,
and this is before the revaluation was certainly over and maybe even before it began. We talked about the
possibility of phasing this position out and bringing in a contract manager. The fact is that the last time this
position went open, there was only one meaningful applicant and really the City, if we were going to fill the job,
had really no choice on who to hire.

So | think if we monitor the management carefully, if the new Administrative Services Director does that and
implements the recommendations in detail that are going to be discussed by the other two people, we can
quickly, with reasonable dispatch improve and strengthen the assessing function of the City.

Now another thing, another big recommendation that is being made is that we undertake a full measure and list
assessment. That means go out and inspect all the properties internally, seek to inspect all the properties
internally. That is an expensive proposition, but | believe we should undertake it. It costs between $1 million
and a million and a half, but probably closer to $1.5 million but this could be done over several years in
preparation for the next revaluation. A problem that we have both in terms of the property records but also just
in terms of perception is that the City has done no full measure and list since the revaluation of 1992. But this
revaluation began in 1990 or 1991, the last full measure and list when believe it or not, | was the Mayor. So the
last time a full measure and list was done, | was basically responsible or in charge of the City while it was being
undertaken it was not actually implemented or did not go into effect until 92, it took quite some time, | think 18
months to accomplish it. It was a bonded project and it went into effect in 1992 but that was the last time it was
done. Other community, no question about it, have done this more frequently; Manchester has done it a couple
of times since that time.

So that is a recommendation that we should undertake and in my view is worth doing. So if we create the new
position of Administrative Services Director to make sure that all of these functions are working together
effectively, if we remove the Assessing Director, we monitor it, we retain the flexibility to bring in by contract
more assessing management if that is necessary and implement all of the other recommendations which | think
you are going to hear about; | think we can make great progress in terms of the function and in terms of
restoring any loss of public confidence in the function. But | would return to the point that the revaluation itself

Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 4

done by KRT is sound, has achieved equity between properties which is the underlying purpose of a
revaluation; at least equity within the data we have. Maybe that equity will be improved by the full measure and
list revaluation or inspection that we undertake. But at least given what we have now, the relative equity within
the properties has been achieved by the full measure and list.

And | guess in terms of how we should proceed, | would ask this, we have faced more controversial issues than
this before. | mean certainly we have heard some valid criticism regarding some of the things that have
occurred in the Assessing Office. But we have faced more and the audit bares that out. But we have faced
more controversial issues than this before. So if we are going to move forward as a community as | hope we
will do, | think it would be better and more constructive that no one use sort of flaming rhetoric, hyperbole about
what is going on. No one down in the Assessing Office, in my opinion, intentionally did anything wrong or
committed any kind of malicious acts. They might have achieved an assessment or arrived at an assessment
that people disagree with or maybe that is incorrect, but it was done in good faith based upon the expertise of
the people down there. They are public servants who have been working for the City; they are not highly paid,
they do the best job they can and like any umpire, they are probably right most of the time, but occasionally a
ball gets called as a strike and occasionally a strike gets called as a ball. But that is inherent in sort of the
human condition. So | think our task as leaders of the City, mine as the Mayor, should be to work with the
people down there, give them more tools, improve their software, you will hear all of the details and listen to the
remarks and comments as we have done and move forward with as much unity as we can with as much
goodwill as we can, mutual goodwill, so that as a community we can achieve an assessing function that is
effective, which has public confidence and which will achieve at least the greatest degree of accuracy that within
an exact science is possible.

So with that | turn it over to Mr. Griffin and Ms. Kleiner. | am available for questions but probably it is best just to
get the whole thing out. Why don’t | turn it over to Mr. Griffin and Ms. Kleiner to talk through any of the details:
they obviously can answer your questions as well.

Kim Kleiner, Chief of Staff

Good evening, thank you for having us. If it pleases the Board | would like to walk a little bit through the
methodology used for the audit. | want to state that this is a common methodology that is used with any
management audit report. This was not designed by us although this is a structure that | have used before,
generally most used in inventory management, purchasing, receivables, I’ve seen it used in production
efficiencies, things of that sort. So when you get to the back and you are reading through the questions, those
questions were not designed by us, they are designed by a group that puts together management audit reports
and they are from a set of questions that commonly used and that I’ve used before in other audit reports.

So Mr. Griffin and | started the process shortly after the Mayor instructed us to do so last November. We
conducted interviews with the questions that you see in the back of the report with every single employee in
assessing, including the Chief Assessor. They were separate interviews, Mr. Griffin conducted a set and |
conducted a set and they were very thorough. We then moved from assessing all the internal policies within the
Department and the individual employee’s knowledge of such policies. We moved through policies and
standards that are written by the International Association of Assessors and we looked at those in comparison
to ways that our internal policies were written.

We then looked at different operational procedures and the way that work was flowing through the department
between different employees. We studied the Board of Assessor meeting minutes and agendas, their board
packets, we worked through budget information, we had consultations with various other City departments
including IT and we consulted with various outside organizations and consultants that we’ve dealt with, Patriot
Systems, KRT, CDM Smith. From there, we quickly then moved to looking at what we could find for various
best practices, which is a common procedure. We sat with many of our internal employees in IT and worked
through how the system flows and our data flows from various organizations. So you have Assessing, then you
have the tax system, you have building permits that are feeding all these systems have to interact and we