Finance Committee - 07/15/2020 Page 11
Director Kleiner
Your Chief Assessor is advertised at about $117 plus benefits and pension, so it would be less than the Chief
Assessor when you take into consideration benefits.
Alderman Laws
| have full confidence in you Ms. Kleiner and | trust you to the end of days, I’ve worked with you before in many
different capacities and if you need this, | believe you need this. It just seems like a lot of money fora
temporary solution to a permanent problem and | just needed to voice my concern about that. But | will
support this.
Mayor Donchess
| mean | think in answer to Alderman Laws’ concern, | mean this is a necessary function in the sense that a
Licensed Assessing Supervisor is required to certify the work of the other Assessors, otherwise the other
Assessors by law can’t really do anything. So without this position the work of the Assessing Department and
Ms. Kleiner can correct me if | am misstating any of this, but the work of the Assessing Department would
essentially stop. Any valuations or other work, valuations, abatement requests, anything that Assessors do,
those results, those conclusions need to be reviewed by an Assessing Supervisor. Now that, of course, begs
the question “well what did we do before we had Mr. Norman”. Well as you | think know because it has been
publicized in the paper and we have reported to you at various times, multiple complaints have been filed by a
resident or two against all of the Assessors, multiple complaints, criminal complaints, ethics complaint, to be
straight forward, that’s why we can’t find a Chief Assessor, a very big factor. This is very well known within the
Assessing Community of New Hampshire; it is a small community. People know each other, they believe that
these attacks are totally unjustified and no one wants to step into this type of position.
So it puts Nashua in a very vulnerable place because no one wants to work here. It is difficult to attract
someone to work here although most of these complaints, criminal and otherwise have turned out to be
unfounded, there was a situation where, because we have two brothers who have worked for the City for a
long, long time like 20 years or so in the Assessing Department. There was a situation where one brother went
out to do as assessment review at the request of the property owner and reached a certain conclusion, I’m not
sure what exactly that conclusion was. But the property owner was unsatisfied with that so wanted someone
else, but didn’t a review by the same Assessor. So the Chief Assessor at the time sent the only other
Assessor that was available which happened to be the brother of the first Assessor. He went out and reviewed
the work and | am not sure what conclusion he reached either, but it still did not satisfy the property owner. So
as a result of this, a lot of complaints were filed against all these assessors with an ethics board up in Concord.
You have seen the documentation; there was a single finding which was that, there was a finding that well,
having one brother go in when another brother had already reviewed is an appearance of conflict. Now
something like this had never been decided before this is kind of a new decision.
There’s no specific rule that says one brother can’t do an assessment on the same house as his other brother,
but in any event, there was a find that this way a technical violation and appearance of conflict. So a minor
sanction was issued which was that this Assessor needed to take a course for a year and that he could not
serve as a supervisor for one year. He can still be an Assessor, they were seeking the revocation of all his
licenses and everything like that. Well none of that happened is that his ability to supervise was suspended for
one year and they encouraged him to take a course and then become a supervisor and then he’d be a
supervisor again. So that meant that the City didn’t have an Assessing Supervisor, hence the search to find an
Assessing Supervisor. Now because of the — right or wrong — the people in the Assessing Community who are
out there assume that they will come under attack, that they will have criminal complaints, they will have ethics
complaints filed against them just like all of the other Assessors who work for Nashua. So it was very hard to
find someone would take on this responsibility. Mr. Norman was willing to do it. Did he charge top dollar?
Probably — but this is a necessary function. Have all of these complaints filed against the Assessors cost the
hardworking tax payers of Nashua a lot of money? Yes they have.
