Graham, Donna
From: Laurie Ortolano <laurieortolano@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, January 071, 2021 9:17 AM
To: Hansberry, Daniel
Ce: Board of Assessors; Board of Aldermen; Mayor's Office Email; Neumann, Jesse; Graham,
Donna; Laura Colquhoun; Beth Scaer; Norman, Rex; Kleiner, Kimberly; Mandile, Michael;
Turgiss, Gary; Turgiss, Greg; Dame, Douglas
Subject: Request to post full Board packets online and abatement applications online
CAUTION: This email came from outside of the organization. Do not click links/open attachments if source is
unknown.
(Donna Graham, please place this letter in the next Board of Aldermen packet)
January 1, 2021
Mr. Hansberry,
Please place this email communication in the next Board of Assessors packet.
As the Board chair, I am requesting that you ask the assessing office to place the full board packets
online on the city website. I don't believe this requires a vote of the full board, but if you believe it
does, would you please take this matter up at your next Board meeting. As it stands now, the public
has to use a right-to-know request to obtain a copy of the public packets. The clerk of the Board of
Assessors was responsible for sending the packets to any member of the public requesting the
information. For me, this was Cheryl Walley, then Lynn Cameron, then Louise Brown. All of these
people have resigned their jobs in the assessing office and left the city. I do not know who the new
clerk is.
If you simply request that the public packet be placed on the city website, this will eliminate the
workload of the clerk to individually send out multiple responsive documents to interested citizens.
This is consistent with what other City boards do with their public material. I do not have to request
the packet for the Board of Aldermen meetings as a full public packet is available on the website.
The Aldermen clerk does not have to email me anything. This request is being made in the interest
of saving time and taxpayer dollars.
Additionally, would you please request that all abatement applications be placed online and
updated every two weeks when board packets are typically produced. These are time sensitive
documents. These would not have to be redacted and this too would be consistent with what city
boards do with applications. If the Board of Assessors was receiving these applications, then they
would be in the packet. However, the Board has chosen not to review these abatement applications
so they are never part of your public packet.
Also, prior to this pandemic and Ms. Kleiner taking charge of the assessing office, these records
were available for immediate inspection, unredacted, at the counter upon request. Initially, the city
pandemic policy restricted access to the office to 15 minutes and now Ms. Kleiner's office redesign
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