Board of Aldermen 11-27-2018 Page 11
in the assessing office this week, they have been mobbed with people coming in with issues, it is a zoo
in there.
| have stayed out of there because | know what is going on with the tax bills. But when things calm
down a little bit, | will go back and do what | need to do. | hope that you folks as Aldermen can really
get onboard, | would love to see you take a vote of no confidence in that office. At least as a minimum
send a message that you’ve to clean it up. And you’ve got to care, it is really tough for us on the
outside and | just don’t see anyone on the inside doing and making the right decisions. And when you
talk about exemptions, let’s talk about Concord Street, let’s talk about all the communities that give
exemptions to historic homes. We never talk about that and they do and there is a street that is all over
the map with properties that we largely know have so much trouble selling. And | feel very badly, | don’t
benefit with this tax, | don’t live in the historic district, | am not pushing this for me, but these folks who
try to maintain those little mini-museums down there have a brutal time trying to sell those houses and
maintain them. When | see assessing done on those houses that jacks it $100 or $150 or $200,000.00
above sales prices, | cringe. We should be very careful in that neighborhood on how we assess those
homes. Thank you.
Mayor Donchess
| just want to correct any misimpression that may have been created with respect to the reference to my
house because | think there was the implication that somehow | had influenced my own, this building
permit. | think we took out and | actually brought my file, l’ve never even looked at it until | Know Ms.
Ortolano was investigating. We took out a building permit in maybe 2007 or 2008, | was neither an
Alderman nor in office nor a Mayor and the permit said $100,00000. Of course | never even saw the
paperwork at the time because | wasn’t that interested in how this would affect my assessment and the
project took a few years, the house is nearly 100 years old, so you have horse hair plaster, bathrooms
are really small, we moved a door, stuff that didn’t really effect value. There’s a post and whatever it is,
the old wiring system, a lot of that had to be replaced, the plumbing had to be replaced, some stuff had
to be taken out of the basement.
The value went up $30,000.00, at the time | didn’t even look, and it was maybe 2010 or 2011, again |
wasn’t even in office, the implication is that somehow | influenced this as Mayor? | was not Mayor, |
wasn’t even an Alderman and | didn’t even look at what the assessment was at all, | got the tax bill and
| paid it. So the idea that somehow this was improper is completely a slander and it is not an issue that
| thought about, | paid the taxes, | never looked at the property card | wasn’t even really aware of how
this affected my value until this came up and | looked back at the file. Because | knew this might come
up the last couple of meetings, | have had my file, so the next meeting | will bring you my file and you
can look at it, it is a totally an open book. This happened 10 years ago.
| think that certainly mistakes have been made, a lot of this was back in 2013, when you say that the
condos went way down and went way up, that is a two-sided problem, | mean in the sense that yes,
that sort of boomerang affect is a problem, but it meant that people paid lower taxes for five years. So if
that had not happened, they would have paid more to the City. So a lot of these arguments are that
individuals should be paying higher taxes, a building permit — enough value wasn’t added, that means
that some individual, some family who probably thinks they are paying too much, the argument is they
are not paying enough. | am more concerned about the people whose values went up so much from
not on Berkeley Street like Ms. Ortolano’s house where the taxes went down 20%, those aren’t the
people that | am worried about. It is the people who have owned $200,000.00 homes and their
assessments went up 30 or 40%, those are the people that | think we should be concerned about.
As you know, because | have sent you the Memo, | am just going to make two more points, because |
sent you the Memo, | asked John Griffin, CFO and Kim Kleiner, Chief of Staff to do a management
audit and an efficiency audit of the Assessing Office and | think you got that Memo, right? But if you
