Board of Aldermen 11-27-2018 Page 9
the Assessing Office to create some. It just seems like there should be something down there. | know
that legal counsel and members of City Hall, the Mayor, are very concerned about the time that | am
wasting with staff, that | have overstayed my welcome. | have to tell you it is enormously difficult for me
to access this data.
The property cards you cannot get on your computer at home, the data base that is available in the
house at your home is not a clean data base and it says right on the web site that there are errors in
this data and basically you can’t trust it. So | can’t do it from home and when | go into the Assessing
Office, | can use the computer but it will not bring up the format of a property card. | can’t get the data
that | need, unless | print the card out. So | have to use some staff time, and | do it all myself but then it
goes to the printer and they have to charge me and | pay and sort them and count them and send me
on my merry way. You know, | had asked the Assessing Office for help months ago in comping our
house and it was Steve Hamilton up at the DRA | had three good conversations with him. And he gave
me some questions that | would be able to ask my Assessing Office for help. They were not willing to
answer those questions. Their immediate was no, they are not going to help me. He said one of the
things you could ask about was comps. If you are looking at your property and you are confused about,
he knew the effect of your build was an issue for me we talked about this. He said, “Ask for comps”. |
did, so did my assessing chief at the Lakes Region, she said, “just ask for comps, ask for help and ask
them to give you comps”.
| asked John Duhamel for comps, “Could you provide me with any comps or any policies to help me
understand where my house EYB fell in my neighborhood”. He never responded to the e-mail. So the
only way for me to understand that was to go to City Hall and print the 55 cards and pay for it. And
what | learned is we were the only property that was changed aggressively when we were assessed
and that was great data for me to have. We were right at the top of the list. And | wouldn’t have been
looking so much and so deeply into the data, | look back at the way all of this has transpired, if
somebody had shown me some professional courtesy in that office, and just helped me out, had a
single meeting with me, got me some data, | wouldn’t have been in there digging for every property
card. If the guy had come back and said, “Oh you were the only house that was hit at this level, yes,
ok, that may be a question, that’s the data’, | would have been at least happy to know that. And |
wouldn’t have had to spend time down there digging like | have dug. That’s the level we are at.
| cannot emphasize enough how strongly | feel about professional courtesy in an office. You have one
assessor down there who is so professional, any time | am in that office and anyone walks in and he is
around and he happens to have good visibility, he will say to anyone, “Is there anything | can help you
with, do you need anything’?. The women in the office are A1 professional, the Chief, not cutting it. |
have never seen a more unprofessional person in my life. | have had two conversations with him and in
the second conversation a couple weeks ago, only twice, I’ve never had a meeting with this gentleman,
the second conversation | had a couple weeks ago he actually had his head facing a wall while | was
talking to him. Right in front of his staff | asked him if he could turn his head and look at me while | am
speaking to him, to have to ask for that is absurd. It is absurd. And the issue of not really being at work
really disturbs me. You have to take that job on full-time.
It would take very little for this management team or the Mayor’s Office or the CFO to go in there and
do a quick audit on what is happening with attendance and get that information pretty quickly,
somebody has to care and look into it. | think a lot of our problems occurred when | called him a year
ago, he wasn’t willing to meet, it was a very hostile conversation, | was wrong about everything, permits
are captured, sales data is done, you are wrong, you are wrong, you are wrong. And that is what got
me hopping because | didn’t feel | was wrong.
It is just really disappointing and with regard to our property card, | had another neighbor go in last
week, I’ve had two now, they go to the professional assessor, the one | would recommend to anyone,
and there’s only one that | will recommend that somebody go to in that office, only one. And they had a
question on the land issue on the cards, there is a bunch of neighbors who are really concerned with
