Laurie Ortolano
41 Berkeley St
Nashua, NH 03064
603-930-2853
Attorney Leonard responded with an invoice for the 2018 abatement appeal rather than the invoice for my
2019 abatement. The invoice was dated February 11, 2020; | had not submitted my 2019 abatement until
February 14, 2020.
After almost 10 back and forth communications, | wrote a complaint to Attorney Bolton against Attorney
Leonard for failing to answer the question, Attorney Bolton responds on October 21, 2020 with the
following:
Mrs. Ortolano:
We now understand that you are distinguishing between your abatement application to the Nashua
Board of Assessors and your abatement appeal to the NH Board of Tax and Land Appeals for tax
year 2019. That being the case, there are no documents conforming to your request. We regret
that in our zeal to be as responsive as we could, we read your request broadly and provided
more than you desired.
Steven A. Bolton
City Corporation Counsel
It took nearly 30 days and many back and forth communications. Not once did Attorney Leonard, who was
Clearly confused and unable to understand this simple request, according to Bolton's response above, pick
up the phone or attempt to clarify the search. The legal office is incompetent at addressing assessing
matiers, does not possess the knowledge on these matiers and is unwilling to reasonably seek out answers
to resolve these information requests.
lt appears when it is to the City's advantage to not provide the correct information, it reverts to prior year
data to satisfy the request, falsely creating the appearance of transparency, openness, and a broad view
but in the case of Mrs. Colquhoun’s request, the City simply outright denies the request rather than provide
the 2020 PILOT spreadsheet. In this case, the legal office and assessing office appear to not want the
public to research these initiatives, so they invoke the narrowest possible interpretation to prevent public
access.
There is some irony in this matter as Chief Vincent serves as Chairman of the Ethics Board of the New
Hampshire Association of Assessing Officials. He ruled on an ethics complaint | filed against Nashua
assessors for failing to be open and forthright in responding to my 2018 information requests in the Nashua
Assessing Office. The NHAAO board ruled that the two assessors were in violation for not providing open
public records. Now, Mr. Vincent is responding in a similar manner as did these noncompliant Assessors.
| would ask the DRA to emphasize to Chief Vincent and the Nashua Assessing employees to follow the
regulations set forth by the DRA, Asb, and [AAO when it comes to responding to information requests. If
the legal office wishes fo provide written responses on behalf of the Assessing Office, Chief Vincent should
verify that the letter represents his search and findings of the requested documents.
