Board of Aldermen 10-23-2018 Page 6
very well and that | needed assistance. When | held up the letter she looked at me and said, “Aha, you
can write”. Upon further discussion she told me she mailed the letter and | said, “I never received it”.
She told me, “You must've received it because | mailed it to you”. Well | never received the letter.
Further on, we were discussing things and she told me that if she hadn’t taken proper notes it was my
fault. In explaining she said that she had told me at one point in many of the months that | had come in
to talk to her about another problem, that she tried to tell me that there was a certain way Nashua did
things. | don’t remember her ever doing that; so | need you to explain to me why an ADA Coordinator
who 1) when | hold up the letter say “Aha, you can write” when | do have issues that make it very hard
for me to write and also why she would then tell me it’s my fault if she didn’t take proper notes.
| need the notes from the day she says she told me or tried to tell me that | wasn’t following procedure.
| also need the notes from the next three times | was there where she also tried to explain to me the
proper procedure, because | don’t remember it ever happening. Now after being accuses twice of
doing things which | don’t remember doing, | was getting upset. And yes my voice was raised because
| was upset | was being accused of things | hadn’t done. So | left or started to leave. She followed me
out in front of two co-workers in the front of her office and proceeded to tell me, “don’t ever come back
here, | don’t want to see you and if you come back I’m going to call the Police”. These are all things
you are not supposed to do to mentally ill people.
There is a reason why a lot of us won’t come up and speak to people, because we are afraid we are
going to be blamed for things. We are afraid we are going to have people tell us we are going to call
the cops on you. So | need you all to explain to me why this was alright for the City of Nashua to do
this to me and why | have to come before you to get an answer on a public safety question | posed
back in April. Now mind you, | have the answer in my pocket, but what | really want to know is why did
it take so long? Why was | abused in her office and what are you going to do about it. I'll hang around
if any of you would like to speak with me afterwards, that’s fine. I’d like a response to these questions
in six weeks. If you don’t think you can do that, I'll give you my name and number and you can call me.
But if you all don’t want to do this, | have been encouraged to go up to the Disability Rights Center in
Concord and file a complaint.
I’d rather that the City of Nashua take care of this problem on its own and explain to me how they are
going to take care of this problem. If you don’t think you can do it, let me know, I'll have another agency
take care of it. Thank you very much. And like | said, I’ll be here when you get done if you want to
speak to me.
Laurie Ortolano 41 Berkeley Street, Nashua, NH. Thank you for the input. | was here six weeks ago
talking about the assessing office and some concerns | had. My concerns continue to grow a bit, | had
an opportunity to look more deeply into sales verifications that we do in the City and it was Trish Klee
who pointed out that | wasn’t using a code correctly in the first round of data | generated. | did not go
after 100 records on sales verification, but | just recently finished my 100 record gathering. The
information is just very concerning, what | see.
I'd like to think that the Assessing Office is working to create equity in these assessments for
everybody. But what | am seeing and what | found most disturbing is that valuations or sales data that
comes in at a sales price, if the assessment is higher than the price that the home sold for, | believe
that in 100% of those cases, the Assessing Office will not reduce the assessment. It just stays high. If
it is 25% out, it stays $50, $60, $70 grand above it; no adjustment. | printed every property card; | have
all 100 trying to look at the notes to see what is the justification. | can’t find it. On the flip side, if an
evaluation is low and let’s say it is at 60% of the sale value, the assessment or 70%, they are willing to
move those up and many of them they only move up to 80/85. That seemed to be the general number.
But if you are at 95, 100, 105, 110, 125, 130, those are staying.
So what it tells me is that they are not looking to create equity in the data base for all of the tax payers.
| don’t understand why, because changing valuations that are simply too high, it is the same pot. You
are just redistributing to get neighborhoods equitable. So that stood out glaring to me and that was
