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Special Bd. of Aldermen — 09/24//2019 Page 6

Then we will choose a couple that we will invite in to speak with us and to rate. Ultimately we hope to have a
decision made as quickly as possible so that we can bring the contract forward to both Finance and to the Board
of Aldermen, considering that is a multi-year endeavor.

| note here again because this is very critical, the EYB, the Effective Year Built. We know there has been a lot
of discussion on this. When CFO Griffin and | conducted the Management Audit, we held meetings with
different assessing experts and we discussed this with the President of Patriot Properties. We let you know at
that time that although the EYB method was used, now back when we installed this software back in the ‘90’s, it
was a commonly used approach. That is not the case now, it is not best practice and we hope that through the
RFP process with the firms getting into as many homes as possible, we will be able to move away from that
Effective Year Built. So it is critical that we get into as many homes as we possibly can. We are going to
provide the public with as much information and make them feel as comfortable as possible. We will also have
members of staff that can answer any questions and we will be using the newsletter to push information on
where they may be concentrating and when so that residents have a heads-up on the areas of the City that the
firm may be in. It has been a long time since the City undergone a Full Measure & List and a revaluation and we
really need to make the best and make sure that this is important data collected for the City.

In April when | came to you | did not recommend an upgrade from AssessPro Classic to AssessProd this
summer. | had actually pushed it out and said that we hoped to do it in 2020; well things change every day in
assessing and what we have found was in order for us to move the exemptions and credits from the ADMIN
System which is the old system which we told we would do this summer. That was not going to be possible with
our current version of AssessPro. That together with the very different information and the highlights and the
benefits that the AssessProd5 version offers, we met with Patriot and they agreed that they could do it. So with
the help of Information Technology, we decided that we would undergo it.

So far, it has been going well. We have completed general training, we are moving on now to more specific
user one-on-one training; so administrative staff needs to know different information than our assessors need to
know. So that would be user specific training. We believe that the benefits of AssessPro5 are going to provide
us with a lot of increased efficiency within the Department. So not only will it provide an abundance of screens
for us to put important data that have been limited in the past, but the AssessProd5 provides for a role based
security which is not current in the AssessPro Classic. So it is important that when you have any system that
your security within the system is really limited to the role that individual plays. So that has been an issue that
AssessPro Classic didn’t address as well as AssessPro5.

You can see there, there’s a number of other benefits; there is the ability for multi-year architecture, meaning
currently we cannot go in and create or enter changes that are for the following tax year. We have to wait until
the present tax year has be rolled and the file has been captured. That may be a series of week that we are not
entering data. This system provides for multi-year where you can actually go in and update a prior year or a
future year depending on what is needed. So that is another important function.

We have, right now, IT is working on a number of projects and they are all inter-related. So not only do we have
the upgrade from AssessPro Classic; we also have within the Building Department and others, a permitting
change from City View to CivicGov. So if you may have noticed up in the auditorium there are computers set up
and staff from the Building Department has been up there training on CivicGov this week. We hear mid-October
they should be up and running completely. That makes changes in the way that the Building Department
communicates with the Assessing Department. So now what IT refers to as a bridge needs to be written
between the AssessProd and the new CivicGov and that needs to be tested and evaluated.

Special Bd. of Aldermen — 09/24//2019 Page 7

We also have the changes within GIS, so GIS has transferred over to new servers and we have the creation of
the GIS Steering Committee, an adaption of the Strategic Plan that was recommended in the report presented
to you by CDM Smith. So Building, GIS, Assessing, it is a large number of changes occurring, we are very
thankful the IT Department and their support. But there is a lot of testing and a lot of training that is required by
a number of different departments.

On top of all the changes, on top of all the training, what are we currently working on? So this is a list provided
for you of what our administrative staff is currently working on. We are preparing for the MS1 and many of you
may have heard from Finance and Budget meetings that we filed for an extension of the MS1 and our new
deadline is October 11". Of course the AP5 Training & Testing they are continuing an audit of our veteran’s
credits. They are updating AssessPro with BTLA in Superior Court abatement appeals and responding to BTLA
check lists that are required for those appeals. They are processing property transfers and name changes and
filing, everything that is normal within the administrative staff function continues. It has not slowed down; they
provide excellent customer service and | can tell you that I’ve had a number of residents come to me and | am
very, very proud of the customer service that the administrative staff provides. Some of you may have heard
that as well. | was at the DRA in a training last week and | heard it up there from members of the DRA on some
of our staff members and they are really looked at as some of the experts in their field. Quite often they are
called from other communities for questions and answers to things. They also print and process all the monthly
building reports and of course schedule the assessors and complete the data entry when they return. They QC
all of the information that is entered by our assessors.

What are the assessors working on right now? Well you’ve all heard pick up of building permits for file capture
prior to October 11". That’s the number one function right now. They also have a sales qualification that’s
mandatory for the DRA Ratio Study. They provide responses to petitions of the appeals at the Hillsborough
Superior Court and the BTLA. They work very closely with Legal on all of those cases. They answer tax payer’s
requests for inspections and inquires and work on the on-going litigation that | mentioned. They review the
exemptions and the credit applications and sign off on those. They have their own review of the MS1 that is
required and they have their own training for AP5.

So while all of this was happening, we processed in 2019 for 2018 406 abatements. I’m sure as the Board of
Assessor can attest, this kept us quite busy. They had all these appear before them; approved was 171 and
denied was 213, 22 PSNH remain with Legal. They also had a total of 959 exemptions to process. So these
are applications that require a great deal of examination of documents and to make that they have completed all
the information and that they can give a recommendation to the Board of Assessors. We have so far received
to the BTLA 6 residential taxpayer’s appeals and 52 commercial. | think that soeaks somewhat to the success of
the revaluation, when you only have 6 appeals to the BTLA. But that is my own opinion. To Superior Court, we
have 28 commercial currently and that number includes PSNH.

This is a project that we brought to you in April, we talked about how the Assessing Office really needed to
undergo a redesign. This plan was created, it was reviewed by City Buildings and the Risk Department. We will
work towards cost estimates but it was require an RFP. The main purpose is really the Customer Service that
the office provides. So currently the office is not handicapped accessible and neither is there a lot of information
for assisting tax payers at the counter. Some of the information that we discuss during an exemption or an
appeal or a credit is information on income. These residents may not feel comfortable discussing this out in a
general customer service area. So the plan does include creating a couple of cubicles within the conference
room in assessing so that these discussions could be held more privately. Currently they are taking these
residents out into the hallway if they need to sit and review and we would recommend that is probably not best
practice. This will have more information to come but as City Buildings looks at the plan and does some more
measurements and an RFP is put together, we will bring that back.

Special Bd. of Aldermen — 09/24//2019 Page 8

All this work is not a result of just the Assessing Department although they have worked extremely hard. We
have to thank the Mayor for his support; the Board of Assessors; of course all of you. The IT Department has
been instrumental, the Legal Department of course, the Tax Department, CFO Griffin and his Department, Risk
& City Buildings, Mr. Budreau and his staff in HR, Purchasing and Director Cummings in Economic
Development. As | mentioned earlier, David Cornell has provided a wealth of information. | know it has been
stated probably many times before you that | am not an assessor, that is true. But | am fortunate to have good
people around me that have reached out and are providing help to us including David Corner, Patriot
Properties, KRT, Mr. Gagne from Manchester, Mr. Reese from Portsmouth and other assessors. So | have to
thank them for all of their support and | Know that our assessors also help them. This is how the assessing
function has really worked for a number of years; it is a very close knit group throughout the State. They often
rely on each other when they have questions and | would remain that is always best practice.

We have a ways to go, we have continued improvements and efficiency that is going to take place. We want this
to be sustainable change. We know that as new management practices will need to be reinforced and nurtured.
We also know that as we discussed with you back in April, we promised to have the discussion on whether the
Chief Assessor role is one that needs to be explored again. So as we look to the future, there’s going to be a lot
of continued discussion and we hope to bring a lot more back to you and update you. But there are a number of
items that we are still evaluating and we hope that you will bear with us. This is a process. That’s all Madam.

President Wilshire

Thank you Director Kleiner, we appreciate your thoroughness and your presentation and bringing your staff in. |
want to thank them for being here as well. Thank you.

Alderman Klee

Thank you very much. | want to make a statement and then | have one real quick question for you. Today | was
up at the State House, part of my Committee; I’m on a sub-committee to review Veteran’s Tax Credits &
Exemptions. In doing so | spoke with people from the DRA and from the NH Municipal Association and that’s
why | knew you had taken the training with others. But the one thing | want to give a shout out to and that is to
Louise Brown. | was told that the boots on the ground and the expert to give me the information | need resides
right here in Nashua in our own Assessing Department. While she did not know who the counterpart was in
Manchester, Louise was the go-to person that she recommends to everybody. So I’d like to thank Louise for her
work and everything that she does.

The question that | have is when you did that little Assessing 101, one of the things that kind of came out was
our property size went down a little tiny bit. And that was because | think Mr. Turgiss has explained to us that
the State came in and kind of re-did the boundary lines slightly. When you talk about the $20,000.00 of course it
was so tiny it wouldn’t have hit $20,000.00 but is that beyond someone going into assessing, could something
like that happen if we got a correction from the State or anything else or that?

Mr. Kleiner

So currently the letters are being issues if your total assessment has changed more than $20,000.00. It has
been brought up at a Board of Assessor meeting by a resident, could it be a percentage of assessment. That is
a pretty good idea because ideally you could have lower assessed properties with families that a change in their
tax situation may actually affect more. We are going to look at that. What | don’t want to do, is we are moving
to the AssessPro5 and | want to figure out how we can automate these processes.

Special Bd. of Aldermen — 09/24//2019 Page 9

So that’s a process that’s easily automated within AssessProd and that has percentages. So it’s not that we’re
not taking resident's idea; we are but we are in that crucial time where we are moving from one software to
another. We could look to see if there is the ability to automate a letter on a change; | would assume it was a
change to your Deed?

Alderman Klee

Yeah | think that’s the way it came in. | wrote it down, | think it was, no | guess | didn’t write it down. Something
like the HS something. It was the HCRD or something like that that changed and actually brought the property
line down a little bit. Madam President may | just ask, OK, the other question | have which is my biggest
concern of everything you did. What happens if Thursday comes and we don’t get any? Do we throw it out
again?

Ms. Kleiner

Yes, yes we do. | would hope that maybe some of the firms that attended the pre-bid meeting might be willing to
give us some reasons why? Was there something in the RFP specifically? | think that the RFP, it is very
thorough so we are asking for a lot of communication and we are expecting them to make continuous entries to
get into the homes. So | am really thinking that is not going to happen. Purchasing has assured me this
morning when they told me that, that it is common for RFP’s to come in that afternoon, all at once, so I’m going
with that.

Alderman Klee

Thank you.

ADJOURNMENT

MOTION BY ALDERMAN O’BRIEN TO ADJOURN
MOTION CARRIED

The meeting was declared adjourned at 7:38 p.m.

Attest: Susan K. Lovering, City Clerk

Special Board of
Aldermen

_, Assessing Department

7 Update

September 24, 2019

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Note: Staffing levels have remained the same. Karina Ochoa
joined the Administrative Services office as the
Administrative Assistant and provides support to the
department and director.

This summer, a junior from the Nashua High School, in the
Mayor's Internship program also assisted the department.
Pam Andruskevich, GIS Technician II, also plays an important Kim Kleiner |
role in the maintaining of property data through Pictometry | itecorof administrative Services.
and GIS mapping. |
Upon passing of R-19-176, Assessing will hire a temporary os
Assessor for 3 to 6 months, part time up to $20,000. |

Louise Brown on | ere, | pe, |

5 2 | Assessor, Commerical | Assessor, Commerical | Assessor, Residential | Assessor, Residential

Supervisor, Assessing | : | ; : 1 |
hein | Greg Turgiss Doug Dame | Gary Turgiss Mike Mandile

| Lynn Cameron | Amanda Mazerolle

oe, | Assesing Admin | Assessing Admin
P Specialist] Specialist |

| |

| |

Assessing Improvement Mind Map

Patriot Munis Tax

Training _ Metrics

Software

Applications Full

Measure
and List

Admins eae

Review
Property
Values

Physical Office Building
Space Permits

Board of Customer
Assessors Service

Five Key Areas of Improvement

1. Transparency/Customer Service

2. Efficiency/ Data Collection
3. Procedures /Communication
4. Property Data Accuracy

5. Software / Program Applications

Transparency and Customer Service

Tools and Information for the public reorganized for easier navigation — “Popular Links” Buttons
Additional tools and information added: Residential Assessment Information Guide, Understanding
NH Property Tax, Explanation of your Tax Bill, Understanding of your Property Card.

Property Card Access:
Online Access of your Property Card - updated once a year, the card represents your December
Tax Bill.
Online Request for your current, “live” Property Card — emailed to you with instructions on how
to read it.

The "Assessing Monitor" Newsletter — Issued monthly will include important dates and deadlines, notice
of changes and updates within the department, and general information to increase
transparency regarding the assessing function. Residents can sign-up to receive by email.

Board of Assessors:
Meetings — Now televised on Ch. 16, recorded and available on You Tube. Minutes are verbatim
and available on the website.
Email Address created for members of the public to contact the Board of Assessors,
BOASSESS@nashuanh.gov.

Board of Aldermen Page 12
April 26, 2016

that if there is an alternative that might be acceptable | would like us to address it. | leave that out there as a
possibility.

Alderman Schoneman

| want to state again that | never thought that the legislation was done for the intent of bumping it up and | have
the utmost respect for Mayor Donchess and Alderman Siegel who put this legislation together. | expressed my
feelings that it was an inadvertent consequence of something that sounded noble and certainly had noble
intent. | think that the idea of shrinking this down to some other number, we can do it committee and we will
have plenty of discussion there, it could be palatable but | think we need to flush it out at the committee level
plus I’m not sure the $750 is the right number, maybe $350 is the right number if that is the amount for fiscal
"17 that is the amount to be impacted. Again, | think we should do it at the committee level and | would
certainly be amenable to have that conversation.

Alderman Lopez

If | understood Alderman Siegel’s presentation and Alderman Clemons’ we are not abdicating our right to be
pragmatic in making decisions about budgeting, this is just intended to solve a single issue so reducing the
amount of...instead of $22 million making it $700,000; we are still exercising the same authority aren’t we?

Alderman Siegel

To answer that, yes we still have an obligation to be prudent and we still have the issue of a number going up
but my sense in having spoken to people privately and my sense about the way the conversation is going is |
don’t get a feeling that the use of the money is the issue, it’s the consequences to the cap bump and so if that
cap bump consequence were contained and more palatable to those who object then | think that might be a
workable compromise where we can solve some of our problems without introducing side effects. Right now
the legislation transfers the entire amount in one bulk transfer which bumps it all the way up. Remember, as |
originally explained this, the whole point of this was to give us three years to solve a problem which hopefully if
we solve it in two years, the point is the expendable trust fund would lapse that money would go right back. If
we allocate it in thirds and we have to approve it every year then by definition we were given that decision up
front and again we don’t have that same gap where people can be concerned that we are going to be fitting all
sorts of magically additional spending. It’s all about solving the pension issue forced upon us by the state. |
am trying to work around that aberration in the way the cap is calculated. That’s why | introduced plan B and |
think it’s worth reasonably vetting at the committee level.

Alderman Cookson

| appreciate all of the comments this evening. I’ve had conversations with Alderman Siegel with regard to the
legislation and | think it’s a good idea. | am more palatable to plan B and | will state so this evening. | think
that we are also in a very unique position as a Board to have two members of it actually be state
representatives as well. | think we have a meeting with the State Delegation on the 5" of May. Alderman
LeBrun and Alderman O’Brien are in the enviable positon of hearing what are concerns are as a Board of
Aldermen and |’m hoping that you are able to represent that position as well to the State Delegation when we
are able to have communications and conversations with them. As Alderman Siegel said, we are not the only
city that is affected by this so | think there is a real opportunity to go back to the state and say zero is not the
answer. We, as a state, have to support more for our cities and I’m not sure that you can say that zero is going
to be your contribution to the cities any longer. This extends to Manchester, Concord and some of the larger
cities that are going to be impacted by the state’s decision not to contribute anything and while you may not
have influence over other city’s delegates, | think that you, as a representative of the State of New Hampshire
have an obligation to take our concerns and express them to our State Delegation as we will also and get that
seed growing so that hopefully we can take a multi-pronged approach to the problem. Hopefully the State
Delegation can address it in another capacity.