Board Of Aldermen - Agenda - 6/23/2020 - P16
At this time, the Board of Aldermen does not accept verbal public input. They accept emails that are put in the
agenda for the public to view and they are read into the record by name of the author only.
The Board of Assessors is not willing to do that and appears to accept the advice of Attorney Bolton, City legal.
The legal department has advised the board that there is no requirement within the law which requires
acknowledgement of an email.
So, the Board of Aldermen have decided to reject legal counsel's advice in that they acknowledge the emails,
put the emails on public record and record in the minutes under the name of the writer.
But, the Board of Assessor has no public input, email or otherwise. I really don't understand why I have been
batted around on this issue and you could not just directly inform me that no community comment, of any
form, would be allowed. So far, in Nashua, you are the only board I have found that will not allow the public
any form of public communication with the Board. For an Office that 1s under scrutiny with the State and the
BTLA, and transparency is a priority, it is amazing how you have chosen to barricade yourselves from the
public. It appears to me that the Board of Assessor is not operating like the Board of Aldermen.
Legal's advice appears to be a general blanket statement. In ordinary times this would be ok. Because in
ordinary times, any member of the public could attend a meeting and speak. Now with remote meetings, this is
no longer possible. So, asking the board to make concessions to allow the public to provide input, at least by
email, recorded as part of the public record and identified in a public meeting would be the very least you can
do.
The City of Manchester is allowing public input to be phoned in, stated in person at the chamber microphone or
submitted as an email read into the record. Our citizens have none of this.
It is almost unfathomable in 2020 that an Assessing Board, which creates the property values to capture the
majority of finances for the City's budget, will not accept any form of public input.
Laurie
On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 2:32 PM Hansberry, Daniel <HansberryD@nashuanh.gov> wrote:
Dear Ms. Ortolano,
The legal department has advised the board that there is no requirement within the law which requires
acknowledgement of an email. [ will follow-up on your request for placement on the agenda regarding the
presentation of your abatement.
Regards,
Dan Hansberry
From: Laurie Ortolano [laurieortolano@email.com]
