Board of Aldermen 01-12-2021 Page 15
From: Kim Kleiner, Administrative Services Director
Re: Public Information and Transparency
There being no objection, President Wilshire accepted the communications and placed them on file.
PERIOD FOR PUBLIC COMMENT RELATIVE TO ITEMS EXPECTED TO BE ACTED UPON THIS
EVENING
President Wilshire
Ms. Colquhoun?
Laura Colquhoun Yes. It’s Laura Colquhoun from 30 Greenwood Drive. I'd like to go on the record that |
think Ms. Kleiner’s Memo in the Agenda tonight is a joke. If you call any other town and/or city, they are
much more transparent than the City of Nashua and they are willing to give information to any resident in a
timely fashion and this is not something within the City of Nashua is currently doing. Since the City has
hired Ms. Kleiner her number one job has been to hide information from residents. Her updating the City
Website has been a total disaster. It has been 15 months and the City still cannot get it right. Ms. Kleiner
has made it more difficult for the average resident to seek information on the City Website. As of today, the
City’s website is still showing 2019 property cards even though they closed the system back in October of
2020. Is Ms. Kleiner trying to make it impossible for the residents to file an abatement on their property
taxes this year?
Recently Ms. Kleiner showed her inexperience at her job by stating that the new Chief of Assessing had
ethical standards including fair treatment to coworkers before fair treatment to residents. The Chief's
number one job is to make sure that the Nashua Taxpayers have fair assessments and show no favoritism
towards anyone. Bottom line is the Chief's job is to make sure that Assessing is running smoothly and
correctly and that he has ethical standards and in dealing with all Nashua taxpayers because it is the
taxpayer who is paying his salary. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Anyone else that wants to give public comment?
Laurie Ortolano 41 Berkeley Street. Hi, I’d like to just speak briefly about the transparency chart. The
Mayor’s is correct, there are 19 boxes checked off in Nashua and the next community with the highest
number of boxes is 8 and | think that’s Hudson. But | can tell you, | would much rather work with Hudson,
Manchester and Keene than | would with Manchester. Because what is on a website doesn’t necessarily
indicate the true transparency of a Department. And the Mayor underestimates what the people factor, the
human factor of transparency and that’s what we are missing in our Assessing Department as well as some
serious staffing issues. You know and to be fair, 13 of those boxes were checked off when John Duhamel
was there and probably when Angelo — John didn’t add anything — Angelo Marino was there. Angelo
Marino was pretty progressive about open records getting GIS up and having those property search tools
and those extra buttons on our website.
So we still led the way with those two past chiefs and yet we got into all this trouble. So you know | can tell
you Manchester only has 6 boxes, but | call up to the Chief there and | ask for an excel copy of their sales
analysis spread sheet and | get it in like 30 minutes. In the City of Nashua, it took me 30 days and the Legal
Office said they had to review trying to find an exemption to prevent me from having it. | mean that’s what
they were doing, were looking a way to keep it from me. | do the same thing in Keene, the same thing in
Hudson. | can get on the phone and have a 30 minute talk with somebody and | can tell you what | learn in
30 minutes is probably equivalent to 25 Right-to-Knows that | have to do in this City.
