Finance Committee - 07/15/2020 Page 10
Director Kleiner
No. If the City was to terminate the contract the payments end. The reason that we say not to exceed $124 is
we figured on a year if he was to last a year, that’s how much the weekly payments would turn out to be.
Alderwoman Lu
I’m sorry, | didn’t completely read the contract. How is the fee determined, is it an hourly rate, is ita weekly
rate?
Director Kleiner
It’s a weekly rate.
Alderwoman Lu
Ok and when did we develop the need for this, I’m asking how long we have working without this important
required staff member?
Director Kleiner
So | am going to give you two different answers because | want to be very clear with the Committee. I’ve had
the pleasure of working with some truly amazing individuals across the State that have given technical advice
to me and to our staff while we have been undergoing important changes within the Department. | spoke to last
night about David Cornell, certainly an expert of all experts. But I’ve had other Chiefs across the State that
have reached out and been very supportive of our Department and | am truly very grateful for that. | think that
we have needed this. Certainly when | came to you last fall and | said that it was time to hire another Chief
that’s when we really needed some more technical experience. | realized that so that was the start of it. We
did have a supervisor, someone that held the Certification within the Department until most recently and now
we do not. So now it is an issue for the Department in the work that we do moving forward.
Alderwoman Lu
OK, thank you.
Alderman Laws
Ms. Kleiner did we go out to bid for this or did we just pick this guy because we knew who he was?
Director Kleiner
Great question, we did not go out to bid for this, we actually put out a request on an Assessing List Serve
which goes out to all the professional assessors. We reached out to the DRA for recommendations, we
reached out to the NHAAO for recommendations. Mr. Norman stepped forth, | did reach out to other firms
within the area and spoke with three other Assessing firms. At the moment no one else was interested in the
contract.
Alderman Laws
Follow up Mayor? | just lost my thought. | am just a little bit apprehensive about this because that’s a lot of
money for what effectively may end up being a part-time job. And it’s more than we’d be paying a Chief
Assessor, am | correct, not counting benefits, pension things like that. Is that true?
