Board of Aldermen 03-27-2018 Page 9
The fact is that city-wide only 3.38% of eligible voters showed up for this election and the City Clerk’s
office today couldn't tell me exactly how much it cost because they don’t have all the numbers yet. |
know before they talked about it costing over $30,000.00. So it’s $30,000.00 that we don’t necessarily
have to spend, plus the people who man the polls are spending a lot of time doing this. So the poll
workers asked me, “isn’t there some better way we could do this” and | don’t know, | don’t know if there
is or not. | know that a lot of people feel very strongly that the only way to elect people is to have an
election, where all the voters have a chance to express their vote. | want to acknowledge the people
who talked to me about it and wondered if there is some alternative way to select a replacement during
a short-term, until a regular election could occur. And | don’t know what the answer is but I’ll be looking
into it.
The other thing that | wanted to talk about is as I’m sure you all have received a lot of complaints about
pot holes. And | am the liaison to the Board of Public Works. | conveyed the fact that people have
complained about pot holes to them. They have gone through the explanation and it’s on the web site,
you have all heard it a million times about how pot holes are created and during the winter there is not a
whole lot we can do about it, other than patch because it’s cold, it’s a cold patch and it doesn’t last very
long. It’s not a good solution until the weather improves when more permanent repairs can be made.
But some people have said that their cars have suffered damage as a result of the pot holes and |
wanted to make sure that people knew that you can report pot holes . The Department of Public Works
has a place that you can on-line go to DPWREQUESTS@NASHUANH.GOV and report a pot hole.
You can also call them at 589-4797. There is also, if you go on the web site, you'll find a nice little
chart, it’s at yourgov.cartegraph.com and it’s a little map. And on this little map with your cursor, you
can pinpoint where this a pot hole and click it and it automatically reports it to the Department of Public
Works. | did it this weekend and | got an acknowledgement that my report had been received and
hopefully that will translate into those pot holes being filled. | wanted people to know about that. And if
you suffer damage, you can also report it to the City Risk Management Department and make a claim
that way.
| also wanted to comment, as a new Alderman, | am constantly amazed at how fast things happen here.
I’m sure people watching have kind of wondered themselves, “what just happened”. But | wanted
people to know we just awarded a contract to KRT Appraisal to do a revaluation. And | have concerns
expressed to me about the revaluation and | wanted to take this opportunity to try to explain and if |
don’t do it well enough Mayor, I’m sure you will correct me. The City has to revalue the properties
every five years. To do a true revaluation we would hire a company to come in and visit every property
in the City inside and outside to determine how that value might have changed over the years. That is
a very expensive process, millions of dollars it would cost. So instead of doing that, we are doing,
which is perfectly acceptable and something that we have done for years now, it’s a statistical
revaluation where we hire a company. KRT Appraisals is going to look at all the properties in town and
re-evaluate them according to recent sales, comparable sales they are called. So if your property has
been appraised at let’s say $200,000.00 and similar houses like yours in your neighborhood have sold
for $300,000.00 because the values have gone up, this company is going to say we value your
property, based upon those comparable sales at a higher amount.
The problem that the Mayor has pointed out, is that for residential properties we have lots of information
about sales. During the past year there have been lots of sales and they compare your property to
recent sales of similar properties and determine pretty accurately what your property is worth, what the
fair market value of your property is worth today in today’s market. With commercial properties,
however, the information is not so readily available because there haven’t been many sales of
commercial properties. So the Mayor is afraid that while the residential properties are going to be
increased in value because of this new information, that commercial properties are going to stay the
same because we don’t have a lot of information about sales. He has proposed that KRT is going to do
this, they are going to look at commercial properties and re-value them not based on sales because
there is not a lot of information about sales, but rather based upon their income value. How much are
they renting their properties from or how much are similar properties being rented for and to determine
their value based upon their rental income. This appraisal company and the Mayor feel that this would
