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Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 14

Yes, we might want to do more frequent assessments. If we do this full measure and list over 3 years which is
about as quickly as it can get done, that would enable us to undertake a new revaluation in 3 years if we want

to. But it does take time to do that inspection because you’ve got to put a lot of people out in the field. It is an

expensive exercise but it does help to achieve equity and certainly a better perception of equity. So | think the

idea of possibly doing this more often is something we want to consider even though every time we do it there

are unhappy people.

Point three, even though this was a statistical revaluation, it wasn’t just working with numbers, they did go out
and visually inspect from the outside every property so there at least was that. It wasn’t just done in the office,
well let’s change this number by such and such. They looked at all the properties. Now they didn’t go in, they
didn’t seek to actually go in, but they looked at every property to try to judge its condition, to make sure that its
dimensions were properly captured and they saw things like in some cases a house might be dimensionally
higher than was reflected in the records. When they found something like that they corrected it or maybe other
external features that they were able to observe. So that was the way they went about it; so it wasn’t just a
numbers approach.

And number three the building permits, at least in my take on the situation, they are a tool but a very inexact one
because you only need a building permit if you are going to do certain things; electrical, any change to electrical,
any change to plumbing or to a bearing wall, you need a building permit. But you do a building permit on your
electrical you may not increase the value at all. You know if you fix the old rod and tube which I’ve done and
you replace it with something more modern in parts of the house, no one pays more because of that.

On the other hand, you can do projects that increase value considerably without a building permit, validly. So
let’s you say you go into the kitchen and you do not alter electrical or plumbing or any bearing wall, you can
change a wall but if you don’t have a bearing wall you don’t need a building permit. And you put in new
cabinets, you put in the best appliances, you put in granite counter tops and all this stuff; that may not require a
building permit if you are not making certain electrical and plumbing changes. So the building permit helps it
helps to give the assessor notice that there might be changes in value that they should examine and to the
extent that hasn’t been done in the past that will be done in the future, from here on in. We are not sure we
think it usually mostly been done but it will be done from now on. But it is a tool but it doesn’t provide all the
answers and it doesn’t capture all value. Sometimes it can miss substantial increases; but on the other hand, a
building permit that requires some considerable expenditure might, on the other hand, not increase value that
much. But it does alert them that they should go in and at least look at the situation and see what’s there. And
if that is inaccurate, one of these other experts can correct me.

Alderman Jette

| just have one last question. Attorney Bolton when you talk about people refusing entry and allow inspection,
you talked about perhaps our legislators could amend the State Law to give you more authority to do that. |
would suggest that if that is something that you want, I’m sure they are more than willing to help you do that, if
you provide them with what you want. But | always thought that the remedy to that is if the assessor was
refused entry, he could assume that you’ve got the Taj Mahal in there, behind those closed doors. And then
when you get your assessment and you think you are being overly assessed you could then request an
abatement and the burden of proof is on you to show that it was not assessed properly. Doesn’t that work
anymore?

Attorney Bolton

Well that was a method that used to be used but now people who work as assessors in communities have to be
certified by an agency that is part of the Department of Revenue Administration. It is called the Assessing
Standards Board. And if they start making things up just because they didn’t get in to a property a complaint
can be filed against them and they can lose that certification and therefore lose their job. So assuming, without

Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 15

any proof that there is finished basement or guessing at the number of bathrooms, bedrooms or anything else
without reason is not something that professional assessors are well-advised to do.

Alderman Jette

So your answer is you do need legislation to give you more authority.

Attorney Bolton

Well as | say in the past there was a disincentive to the tax payer to refuse entry and that disincentive was
removed. Now if any of the legislators from Nashua or elsewhere in the State just want to just give us blanket
authority to enter any premises it will make the assessing function easier. | think there will be some opposition
to that. Perhaps a compromise could be arrived at.

Alderman O’Brien

| think we’d be happy to except for that little document called the Constitution but we’ll have to look at that.

Alderwoman Kelly

Thank you. So | think that the responsibilities of the Chief Assessor are pretty well outlined in the report and my
question is around what the new role, the Administrative Service Director will do, and what the differences are,
because we don’t have a responsibility outline for that yet.

Ms. Kleiner

So one of the reasons that we were looking at the Administrative Services Director is the job description that it
had in the past was more extensive than just your Chief Assessor. So it was really responsible in one of the
things that we feel from the audit didn’t show and that is the communication between the Departments or now
they are called Divisions to ensure that the processes that they are putting in and the systems that they are
putting in, that there is proper input and communication amongst those. So that is what the Administrative
Services Director, when you look back in the history that Mayor Donchess spoke about, you see how there was
much more internal communication and buy-in of all the departments into whatever the function was being
evaluated or implemented. That would be more of that level. We do know that right now without a Chief
Assessor, someone is going to have to get in there and create an improvement plan and a way to move this
department forward. It is something that CFO Griffin and | have just started just as Mayor Donchess has asked
us to kind of continue with this process. We had our first staff meeting with them and the Mayor attended on
Tuesday. There has to be a lot more oversight without the Chief Assessor by the Administrative Services
Director certainly to begin with.

Alderwoman Kelly

Thank you that was informative. My question as a follow-up is when you are looking for this new person, what
kind of background are you looking for, are you looking for someone who would be heavily an Assessor or
heavily in IT; there are a lot of different departments that we are talking about overseeing. So what does that
look like?

Ms. Kleiner

So | think Mayor Donchess spoke to it best, you are not looking for someone that has a lot of specific knowledge
about every particular department, you are not going to find that, or if you do, take that person. You are looking
for someone who has solid management skills, looking for someone with a business background. | think your
past Administrative Services Directors had accounting backgrounds. The assessing, | mean you can attend

Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 16

training and you can get certain knowledge, you can rely on consultants and professionals with expertise, will
that person know where to get that information? That is important. But! doubt very much you are going to find
one individual who is an assessor, worked in IT, been a purchaser, dealt with insurance, and been a City Clerk.
If you do that is not the strength of the position. The strength of the position is to be able to manage functions
efficiently.

Alderman Klee

| am not sure my comments here are questions as much as comments. Going back to the permits, and | know
this does not fall under the assessors, but for transition and to help. And | also know that if someone pulls a
$25,000.00 permit it may really only bring up the assessment by $5,000.00 and | understand that’s a situation.
But when a permit is pulled and an inspection is done because | did go up there and | talk to them many many
months ago about how they do this. They say when a permit is pulled, depending upon the permit, sometimes
they have to go in incremental times to make sure certain things are done. And then finally do a final inspection
and sign off on that permit and that’s when it would get transmitted to the assessors. But when that happens
and this may be to you Attorney Bolton but when that is done, would it be legal or appropriate for pictures to be
taken for this information to be the visual, kind of the inspection that they do, to be sent on to the Assessor’s
Office to help them in the assessment? | know that this person is not an assessor so they can’t say the value is
up by this, but if they could give that information. And that’s why | said this more may be a comment and an
idea.

And following up on that at the time and again | don’t know about the legality of this. At the time of a sale, often
times open houses are done. Would we legally be able to go in at that time and do an unofficial assessment of
the property.

Attorney Bolton

| Know of no prohibition that would, no law that would prohibit any of our building inspectors from taking
photographs. Certainly if there is an open house, | guess it means it is an open house so anyone can go as
presently constituted our assessors work a Monday through Friday schedule. Most of the open houses take
place on weekends, maybe some in the evenings, but obviously they work regular daytime schedules. Now
over time other things can happen, schedules can be changed, better way to do things can be worked out. It
might not be impossible to have an assessor accompany the Building Inspector for that final inspection and
make it more convenient for the homeowner to have to make that arrangement only once rather than twice. So
all of those things are certainly possible.

Alderman Klee

| guess my last part of that is, | know when my house was on the market, one of the things that a lot of real
estate agents like to do are these videos that literally show, granted they use the wide lens and my oven looked
like it would fit a body in it. You know but just to give you an idea as to how many bedrooms, the process, we
can use all those tools when we are not allowed into a home is what | am kind of thinking.

Attorney Bolton

If you’ve got a home that is being marketed for sale or one that has recently sold, much information can be
gathered. The Assessing Department subscribes to the multiple listing service so they are able to, when a
home has been listed on the service, they are able to access the pictures that have been posted and if there are
links to videos or other things on there. Very often there are flowery descriptions that paint the home in the best
possible light. They can get information there and by a simple calculation when the Deed comes through you
can calculate from the tax stamps what the sale price is. There are other documents that are filed with the DRA
that we can get access too to learn the sales price. That can give you an idea as to whether your data is correct
or not, you are not supposed to and there are reasons because of the way it affects the calculation of the

Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 17

equalization ratio, you are not supposed to be blindly just raise the assessment to match the sales price. That is
true even if you’ve been equalizing it. It can be an indication that wnat you had down in your data as a place
with 1 1 /2 baths turns out to have 3 baths. What you thought was a 3 bedroom home turns out to be a 4
bedroom home. That sort of correction to the data on a piece of property is definitely possible when a house is
listed for sale.

Alderman Klee

The reason | am bringing this up is perhaps that would be a good position to have rather than having an
assessor have to do it but having someone that was more or less kind of their full time job. And | don’t mean to
add cost or that but | think it would be a valuable tool for people to be able to use. And | understand that we
can’t do, because someone could sell a $700,000.00 for $250,000.00 because they are selling it to a family
member. So | understand it goes both directions, so we don’t follow the price in that respect but | was just
thinking more of the descriptive nature of it.

Attorney Bolton

They go through a check on that as well. It is what they call qualifying a sale. One method of valuing property
is to compare it to other properties and make adjustments to the properties you are comparing it to, to try and
arrive at a value that is based upon what the market is doing. Well if you have suspicions that a sale is not truly
based upon the market because it is what they call, not being at arm’s length that would mean as you pointed
out, someone selling to a relative for a lower price. Or seller financing sometimes increases the price so if there
is seller financing involved you would probably disqualify that as being a comparable. So these kind of other
things you mention enter into the picture too. So for every property that is sold, an assessment, a judgement is
made as to whether it is a bona fide arm’s length transaction and therefore a qualified sale.

Alderman Klee
Thank you very much.
Alderman Tencza

Thank you for including the descriptions of the assessing department what each employee does in the
assessing department. | was kind of taken back at how much each person is responsible for. Did you make any
opinions throughout this audit on whether the assessing department is adequately staffed, especially on the
assessing side or even on the administrative side?

Ms. Kleiner

Well we did. So first one of the things that was noted is those job descriptions and we gave you the job
descriptions that are currently held by HR for those positions. We did realize that those need to be reviewed
and restructured and rewritten to provide more oversight on what the positions are actually doing now. So it
lists an appraiser in there, we have assessors. But during the interviews it was the opinion of several staff that
we needed what they call full measure and lister which is not an assessor, but that is the person that goes out
and reviews and looks around and does measurements on houses. That is something that we’ve had in the
past that we do not have now. | think as we look for an improvement plan, we will certainly have to look at the
staffing levels and are they adequate? But more further investigation would be needed on that.

Alderman Tencza
| just would like to make a couple of follow up comments, not really a question but first, just to say we've lost a

number of these positions for reasons over the years and even not doing the full measure and list, you know,
every time we do a full measure and list we take away positions from other parts of City Government and $1

Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 18

million and $1.5 million dollars could be how many teachers or policemen and fire fighters that we are not
funding for that year as well? | mean that is something we all could consider here on the Board as we go
forward. And then | know this is probably not going to happen any time soon but | would hope that, and it is
probably and executive function of the Mayor’s Office, that if it is a policy if at some point the policy of the City is
that we are going go and seek administrative warrants to go into people’s houses, | would hope that would be a
broader discussion. | for one would be very much against that unless it is a worst case scenario.

Attorney Bolton

So you want me to tell you about the ones I’ve already done.
Alderman Dowd

Just a realtor, the MLS presumably has good data, because realtors check tax maps and go in to City Hall and
Town Halls and check the data so the data is pretty good. | wouldn’t go by the write-ups because there are a lot
of English majors that are also realtors that are trying to make it sound like Taj Mahal. And the pictures they
always take a ton of pictures and use the best ones, but it would give you, the MLS would give you the exact
measurements. | mean today realtors use lasers to do measurements to they are pretty accurate, to within less
than an inch. So it is a piece of information that if the assessing department wanted to, could at the time of sale,
take the MLS sheet, put it in the file. The MLS also lists the former sales prices and year built and all these
other pieces of information that would assist an evaluation to some degree. | wouldn’t rely 100% on it but it
gives you a pretty good start, especially if they are not letting you in the house.

President Wilshire
Anything else before we open up for public comment? Ok | am going to open up for public comment If you’d
like to come to the microphone and state your name and address for the record. The first person signed up is

Michael Ortolano.

PERIOD FOR PUBLIC COMMENT

Michael Ortolano 41 Berkeley Street. | just wanted to take a few minutes to address the Mayor’s opening
comments which confused me. The meeting this morning that | sat through in part of the assessing, of the
assessor's board, handed out information regarding the number of abatements filed this year. The numbers are
significant, there’s 376 abatements, not the 200 that were mentioned during your opening comments. That is
44% higher than the last update year in 2013 and it almost 20% higher than previous update in 2009. So | was
confused by the statement because it seemed to be positioning the issue as less of a significant issue than |
think the numbers would reflect.

A big part of this issue is the integrity of the numbers and the numbers are one as you look deeper at it, you
know there seems to be arbitrary methodologies that are used and | think that is pretty much flushed out in the
management audit that was done. The procedures and policies aren’t really in place to support having a strong
level of confidence that the assessments are equitable and the quality of the work product is good. So | just
wanted to highlight that.

| wanted to highlight to this organization that a lot of it is about the numbers. | feel like you know there are lots of
generalizations that are made with regard to the Assessing Department and | do hope that the next wave of this
gets to look more closely at the work product to make sure that gets converging on what should be a
methodology that can be transparent, can be displayed to the community. An ideal scenario, a tax payer that
has the interest and the time should be able to use the same method that the assessors are using to arrive at
the same conclusion. So that’s my only comment. Thank you.

Jim Donchess
Mayor e City of Nashua

To: Board of Aldermen
From: Jim Donchess
Date: 4/8/16

Re: 2016 Sewer Program

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.

2016 Sewer Program — Attached please find Purchasing Manager's Memo # 16-126 regarding this contract.

229 Main Street + PO Box 2019 »° Nashua, New Hampshire 03061-2019
603.589.3260 + fax 603.594.3450 * NashuaMayor@NashuaNH.gov
www. NashuaNH.gov

Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 19

Michael O’Connor Yes thank you, Michael O’Connor, | am at 42 Berkeley Street. So this morning | also
attended the Board of Assessor’s meeting and | had one simple question which led to a follow on but it was
basically about the two major findings which are the ineffective management of the assessing department and a
lack of internal procedures. | asked a question about who was accountable, | was actually glad to hear the
Aldermen bring up, | think it’s Section 42 in the Charter, because when | read that and that was one of the
reasons for my question. It was hard to understand who was responsible for this. The Board gave a direct
answer to the first one, was the Chief Assessor. But then the follow on question | had was — Well then who is
accountable for the oversight. And there it got a little more murky and correct me if I’m wrong, the Attorney, the
CFO, and Ms. Kleiner were there, but | think they clearly weren’t. And so | think that partially answers the
question. There didn’t seem to be any sense of accountability on their part and they said the CFO would have
been the person that they felt was accountable.

And then there was some vague comment that | didn’t quite follow about there was some small supervisory
responsibility of the State. | think this issue of accountability, I’m not just a crank about it, or | guess | am a little
bit of a crank about it. But it is really important. You know without, you know all organizations have some way of
dealing with this accountability, whether you are the Fire Department, the Police Department, | mentioned the
Navy, we all know when you are held to account for when things go wrong in the night. Here things went wrong
| think it is fair to say, even if you are, you know, reading between the lines. There was ineffective management
and it persisted for quite a long time. So who was aware of that? And | guess the answer was — Well maybe
the CFO but then | really it made, because | was sort of put in my place this morning because when the Attorney
was saying — Well these are personnel matters. I’m not trying to get into your personnel matters, I’m trying to
really understand your organizational chart and who should feel responsible and accountable for what went
wrong.

Because this wasn’t one rogue employee over a space of a week and suddenly somebody finally said — Oh hey
this has been persistent conduct for a while. And before you know, there needs to be trust as you move forward
to make it right now. So what | am hearing is that the CFO and this is not meant to be personal I’m sure he is a
fine fellow and he does a great job and | heard all the great work he does in finances. And the answer | heard
tonight sort of makes sense, it was the answer that might have been reasonable this morning except | guess |
was prying into personnel matters.

But the answer is that the man didn’t have enough time to do his job. But here we are, we are moving forward
now, ok and we supposed to trust that the people who are going to make this right are the same people who
don’t have time. The CFO didn’t have time to oversee the management issues in the office that he’s
responsible for, but now he has time to fix it? | don’t know, | think it is going to be really hard to gain trust in that
position.

The second thing that | wanted to bring up was something that | heard this morning that keeps coming up and it
is about the Assessing Department and there seems to be this conflation between the Customer Service part of
the Assessing Department and the output of the Assessment Department, which is fair and equitable
assessments. You know having had to become more familiar with what goes on in assessing and having gone
down there a number of times since last summer when the letters arrived | can tell you anecdotally from my
perspective, the customer service people are great. They are wonderful. Today | hear the Chair of the Board of
Assessors seems like a nice fellow but he’s saying — But aren’t the people really nice down there. Aren’t we all
happy? It’s as if you are going to some place to get surgery and the surgeon was incompetent but you had
some nice treatment up front and that’s all well and good.

| just don’t understand this obsession with trying to say — Yeah hey they’ve got great customer service, they are
great people, they are great underpaid public servants. No one is disputing that, what we are disputing is are
we arriving at fair and equitable assessments that people have confidence in?

The last thing that | wanted to say well actually two more things, I’m sorry. One is there is, and | hear we have a
Realtor here and | know it’s very controversial but there are automated evaluation methods that industry is

Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 20

exploring. It may be a little too cutting edge for this City but you know people are looking at ways that they
don’t, you are not the only, or our assessors aren't the only people who can’t get in houses. But you know other
people in industry for property evaluation can’t get in there either but they somehow figure out how to make
automated methods that are reasonably accurate. And | think if it was any more accurate than what we are
seeing today that would be a step forward.

And lastly the last thing and this was brought up by Ms. Kleiner and | think was a very good point was seeing
customer input where the customer, you were referring to us, the citizens, right? And what | would just suggest
to you in a respectful manner, one thing besides figuring out how to send out surveys to people is maybe to
reasonably accept input from concerned citizens. There may only be a few and | think it is very notable we don’t
have to mention names, of people who have put in a lot of work and a lot of effort and have been really treated, |
think, disrespectfully in a lot of respects because they are bringing a message nobody wants to hear.

Yes, everybody is happy with the customer service down there. We are asking about the assessments. Thank
you.

Lori Ortolano Lori Ortolano, 41 Berkeley Street. Before | start, and maybe we can’t do this, but there is a lady
here and it is her first time at the meeting and she just whispered to me she’d like to talk but she didn’t sign up
on the sheet. So | don’t know if you can accommodate her, but | just wanted to say that before | ended.

I’d like to address the Mayor’s comments first. | Know you believe very strongly that the KRT numbers and this
revaluation that we just did produced equitable assessments. | really am pretty opposite you on this issue. | feel
that we have a lot of inequity in the City and that KRT’s work fell very short, really because the data that they
used was not that good. | can tell you from my perspective living in an old neighborhood, | think the old
neighborhoods are particularly bad. And we have a lot of old neighborhoods around Nashua. And | think there
is a lot of disparity in equity. | think there are a lot of people living in some of those homes that don’t even
understand the disparity that is there.

So | don’t like the idea of waiting 5 years, | think it is too long. I’m not even certain how well your ratio, your
median ratio is going to hold over that time to give you the 5 years to take that time, especially if the real estate
market keeps cruising along with some forward motion. So that is one thing.

Secondly, I’ve been at the last two Board of Assessor’s meetings and | have to be honest, they look pretty darn
disappointing. It is really tough for me sitting there. The meeting | went to two weeks ago had a little bit of a
show going on for me because at that point the number of abatements filed had been just over 100 so the Chair
and the Ex-Chief were commenting on how satisfied the public is — we’ve only got about 100 abatements in and
wow, you know, Lori that is a real good indicator that everyone is very happy, everything is good. You know
people are not upset at all, what are you talking about? And | wasn’t on the agenda so | couldn’t speak to that,
but | walked out really disappointed. | talked to some industry experts who said to me — that’s not an indication
of satisfaction at all and should not be used. A low number of abatements can actually mean that you are pretty
undervalued in your City which | agreed with that.

But now a week goes by and the abatements jump almost to 400. So this week we go into the Board of
Assessors and they are no longer saying — Oh wow we hardly have any abatements everything is fine. But
what they are saying — Well let’s conduct a poll and the Chair is saying you know what? Kim and John asked
about the community and has there been many complaints in their survey and their survey came up and people
seem pretty happy overall people seem pretty happy with the office. | agree with that. I've been down there a lot.
Your front end interface is outstanding. The three women at the front are outstanding, they do a wonderful job.
Every one of them is professional, courteous, makes you feel welcome. But that is not an indication that the
assessments are good and what is going on behind the wall. And so for the Chair to sit there today and say —
Well you know what, we are not hearing any complaints, everyone is pretty happy, that’s a pretty good
indication we don’t have a problem. You know, | have to sort of endure that for Round Two. And | think we are
missing the point.

Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 21

So | know Mr. Bolton highlighted the experience of our Board of Assessors, | have some serious reservations
about what is going on in there. | really do. | am so glad you brought up the Charter, the Board of Assessors
does not seem to know where they fit in that Charter. One of their Mission Responsibilities in the web site it to
review all policy and make certain all policy is implemented. When | saw them 3 months ago, | came with their
Mission Statement and | read to them — your job is to implement policy, review policy, make certain it is
happening. And at that point they looked at the Chief and said — Do we have any policies? And he kind of
shrugged and went — | don’t know we are looking into that. And then we started talking about the need for a
policy on how to judge and grade fixtures. That was in November.

| have been very patient, | have sat back very quietly for 4 months and said nothing about this because | have
been watching, where is that policy. And that’s a pretty simple policy to outline just to establish some standards
among all the assessors. So November goes by and here we are March and | know our Chief left, but through
this entire timeframe, no policy ever came forward, no first read to the Board of Assessors, no second read to
the Board of Assessors, no asking by the Board of Assessors — Hey where is the policy on this? They don’t
seem to even understand that they need to be calling out for that. So | have some serious reservations and
when | go to those meetings | usually come out of it with a pretty good headache. And there is a lot of work to
do because | don’t think they understand what their role is and the Chair, you know, he’s the one who pushed
me to the State to the Commissioner Lindsey Stepp.

When | called the Commissioner and got her on the phone, she was like — Well wait a minute, you know, you
have a problem with the Chief coming to work, that really doesn’t fall on my plate, that’s on your plate, you pay
the guy. You know there is some stuff you are supposed to be doing. My Board of Assessor is like no, no, no,
that is not on us. We are not covering that, go up to the State. So right now even between the State and the
Board of Assessors, | am not certain what our role is. But | can tell you that our Board doesn’t feel like they are
tied to this position at all and | think they are missing something here.

With regard to the position and the elimination of the Chief, | have a major concern. Mayor Donchess you
mentioned that we have somebody within now in a supervisory capacity, | was more or less assured by you
today Kim that we were not promoting anyone from within, nothing was being established that way. | hope that
is true because | have serious reservations given the report about taking staff within and promoting anyone
because there is a total lack of training. One of your commercial assessors has only been doing commercial for
2 years; one of your residential has only being doing residential for 2 years. For those people you’ve had a
massive lack of oversight for the 3 % years that the Chief has been there, so they are not well-trained in my
book at all with oversight and work. And then you’ve got the whole communication problem internally and then
you’ve got massive standards issues among the assessors that have experience in general.

So | get pretty distraught to think that we have somebody capable within of promoting. | also share the same
concerns Mr. O’Connor expressed. You know we haven't had the time, the CFO, even you Kim, have pretty
busy jobs, all-encompassing jobs to now be down in that Assessing Office defining the direction and what needs
to be done concerns me. | feel we need an Assessing Expert. Not for nothing but they are not assessing
experts. And the fact that we are eliminating the Chief, Angelo Marino was a Chief, was a GIS Director and |
think at one point a part-time IT guy and he sat in the Assessing Office and he wore all three hats. And when
the IT piece kind of disappeared he wore two hats. So | don’t know where this person is going to sit but | think
and Angelo was here from 1996 until he left in 2016 and then you brought in John so you had the better of 23
years, you’ve had a Chief. It’s a recognized position in the State.

So the concept that Donnalee got rid of the Director position, we still had a Chief, we’ve had a Chief for a long
time. So | really question, and the City has grown and the parcels of land have grown and the number of
properties have grown. Can we really run without one, do we really not need one? So | hope you think a little
bit about that because that is a reservation | have and | think you need to bring in help now to figure out how
you are going to define how that group operates in a true assessing form.

Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 22

Now | don’t think we are talking enough about some of the issues, the software stuff is great, you are nailing
that, you are on the right page. | think we can’t forget that all of this software stuff has to generate an interface
for the public to be able to access what we would like to access. Please don’t forget about us, property cards,
MLS stuff, sales searches so we can do better abatements. But your assessors, when we talk about permits,
you know the bottom line, | think we are missing a good number of permits, we are just missing them, we don’t
go. Ok? So that’s a problem. MLS adjusting, you know, we are missing a bunch of homes on MLS adjusting,
| don’t care if you put a little 8 in the column the 8 is there and you flip the card over and nothing is written. And
it may be that there was nothing to change, but there should be something there. | can tell you when | look at
the MLS pictures, | go — Oh we should’ve changed stuff. It just looks like we threw an 8 in a column and never
really looked at the pictures. And how we use those pictures, you know that | have a serious reservation about
the sales chasing issue. And | think we have been doing that type of assessing strongly on sold properties that
we have quantitative and we have qualitative data we can look at and we are being way too hard on the
qualitative data. And we are changing those sold properties more aggressively than we are on permitted work
and we are not even doing it to all sold properties, we are doing to select. That’s not acceptable to me.

Now right now my observation is they are not MLS correcting houses at all, there is quite a slew of them that
have been sold since November that all have needs review in the column and they are not using the pictures
they are not doing anything. | don’t know if they gun-shy, | don’t know if they are holding back but some of
them; I'll give you an example are homes that in the past they would correct that, but | think they got to sit there
and not correct. They have a home that is totally rebuilt, remodeled, permits pulled, addition put on, gutted, they
go in in April and they go in with a clean card and they re-assess the whole property, it’s all re-done which is
what they had to do, it’s like a new build. They reassess it, they do it just fine, they do their work the way they
are supposed to, | go down, | can see it, it’s perfect, it is stapled. They come up with an assessment for this
property, $470,000.00. Then six weeks later it goes on the market, it has stayed one the market and it sold in
December, ok? What does it sell for? $560. Alright? The assessment and the price are off. Now ithas a
“needs review” stamp on it. It has a “needs review’ for 3 months. In my opinion, you don’t touch that. You’re
done. You looked at the property, you ran your model, your model produced evaluation, that’s how your model
works. What it tells me is that your model isn’t very good because your permit tables haven’t been updated,
because your square footage build for new construction isn’t that good or additions. But that’s what your model
is.

So if you go to that house now based on the sale price and you say — Oh the year 2000 build | put on that old
house, I’m going to make it 2010 now and I’m going to change the 3 bathrooms to excellent from good; and I’m
going to change kitchen to excellent. And | can drive up another $40,000.00 or $50,000.00 grand out of that.
You are only doing that because of the sales price. Stop. To me you did the best you could because that’s
what your model showed. Because if that house hadn’t sold, and that house had somebody living in it and they
had walked in and done that card, that would be the assessment, that would really be the assessment for the
person living there. So you have to be careful how you use the sales data. And we need a lot of retraining on
that. | think that is very, very important.

| Know there is more in my head and | am tired and | think you are too so | am going to stop here. | appreciate
the work that’s been done, | really do. But! don’t want to lose sight of some of the important stuff going on there
when we are creating valuation. Thank you.

President Wilshire
Thank you. You can speak, name and address for the record please?

Laura Colquhoun My name is Laura Colquhoun, | live at 30 Greenwood Drive in Nashua. | am going to preface
it by saying | am not a public speaker. However | do want to say | thank you very much for explaining the
permits. | now realize how Nashua failed me. | moved in here and | am doing an abatement but that’s beside
the point. | had a gas leak for 4 years and called in 3 plumbers they couldn't find it, finally had the utility
company come in and they realized it was a cracked pipe underneath the water heater. Not happy about that.