I am actually concerned that the Mayor and Ms. Kleiner are deliberately proposing this project to
sabotage the access to public records in the assessing office when new assessments are released by
Vision. With our history of deadline failures, why would the city believe that an $82,040 rushed
investment will cure all that ails our assessing office and create better transparency for citizens?
The software isn't broken, so don't fix it. It makes absolutely no sense to rush an interface that
involves almost 29,000 property record files. The City legal office and leadership constantly call
out the 29,000 Nashua properties as a reason to not be able to quickly find records or address
information requests.
Finally, at the end of the Finance Committee meeting, Ms. Kleiner spoke with me about this
project. I had no idea this project was coming forward and wanted to make clear to the Board that I
did not request or hint at this need for the creation of a new software interface. She seemed to be of
the belief that I was requesting a better interface for abatments. This is simply not true. We got into
a discussion about the Cornell Dashboard and she highlighted that I had complained about the
interface. She is correct; however, my complaint was because the assessor was trained on the
dashboard but the public was not and she would not allow her assessor to assist the public on the
interface - or - more correctly - me. She would not allow me to speak to a trained assessor. This
was completely absurd. I watched assessing clerks constantly work with the public during
abatement season to assist them with the sales search tool to find comparable sales. It was
considered the clerk's job. Ms. Kleiner shut that down. Again, Ms. Kleiner believed I was the only
one having difficulties. It would appear that citizens really like the tool, so please don't change it.
Please vote No on this project and do not permit bond money to be expended for this type of
"transparency" upgrade. And please ask questions about this when it is brought before the board. If
you vote to go through with it, please make sure that the existing assessing webpage with all the
features, will still be available to the public when the new numbers are released. If you don't create
a redundant system, you could have a big problem. And let's stop fixing problems and spending
money on problems that don't exist.
Sincerely,
Laurie Ortolano
41 Berkeley St.
