Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing — May 20, 2020 Page 19
Chairman Dowd
OK.
Ms. Ortolano Thank you.
130 PURCHASING DEPARTMENT
132 ASSESSING
Chairman Dowd
All set? Thank you. Alright, Purchasing, any questions or comments relative to the Purchasing Budget?
Seeing and Hearing none — Assessing?
Ms. Ortolano Yes. Laurie Ortolano, 41 Berkeley Street.
Chairman Dowd
Mm-hmm?
Ms. Ortolano This is an area that | obviously have looked at closely and | believe that there are positions in
here that unlike what the Mayor said that everyone is working 70 hours a week, that’s not the case in this
Department. | would challenge anyone who says it is also being handled at 40 hours a week. So number
one, | don’t understand why we didn’t reduce hours or furlough in this Department. Number two, when we
hired Vision Appraisal and | went to the March 2 meeting with the DRA and Vision, they explained that by
April 1°, after the annual inventory date, that Vision would be taking over the MLS Sales Verification, the
Sales Data and also capturing permits.
A major part of our Assessors’ job description is sales verification and permit capture. And when | heard this,
| have wondered what are our Assessors going to do because their job descriptions involve a good bit of this
work and why were we turning all of this over to Vision and then keeping our staff at the level we were?
Frankly, | honestly thought that the City was making a move to outsource the Department and phase out the
assessors, but they are not actually phasing them out. And | thought that because when you assign the work
like they say they are assigning to an outside contractor that we are paying $1.3 million, then | wonder why
we are paying all these assessors’ salaries and their job descriptions don’t match what they are doing any
longer. | think the job description should match. And it’s not something that | say to put a smile on your face
Ms. Kleiner, | really say it because | don’t understand it and | have wondered and nobody will answer this kind
of question.
Chairman Dowd
Director Kleiner?
Director Kleiner
Yes, so I'll start with the first. The staff who are in the Assessing Department they are all working 40 plus
hours since we closed City Hall Building March 15. So that the public knows, they are working, we hold staff
meetings virtually, they have worked extremely hard to pick up building permit information to look at new
construction, to process exemptions and credits and to get everything ready for the July tax bills. That staff
has continued to work very hard remotely. So | will start with that.
