Special Bd. of Aldermen — 02/27/2017 Page 13
Mr. Griffin
We haven't thought that far out but we do know that the more and better information that we can get out to the
public the better we’re going to be.
Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja
Okay so | would anticipate like copies of it would be at the library, the senior center, other places, the bus
stations, other places people might go looking for information here at City Hall.
Mr. Griffin
| arrived in 2010 just to put this whole thing in perspective. We lost a billion dollars in value as a city in 2008.
We lost another half a billion in 2013. The results of 08 were that 75 percent of the residential taxpayers got a
tax bill reduction the following year and then 66 percent got a reduction in’13. So this is certainly a market
correction but it’s going the other way as Mayor Donchess has indicated. The more information we get the
better. | think the good news here is that the property values are real. The sales are taking place and there’s
very little vacancy in the apartments. The vacancy in the apartments being low coupled with the rent increases
give us optimism that that strata that includes the five plus apartments we could probably capture value there.
That’s very important to know that folks who owned their home back like Alderman Jette, he saw a reduction or
maybe a modest increase and now the likelihood is an increase. It’s a balancing act and within the strata
within the single family residential which we have 15,600, they’re categorized ranch, gambrel, colonial by
neighborhood. There is all kinds of | think they call “tables”. In here there’s all kinds of tables that’s what
creates the value at the end.
Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja
| just think it’s important that if we’re putting information out there to educate taxpayers we remember that not
everyone is going to access it on line and we think about where else we have that information available so
people know and understand what we’re doing. Thank you.
Alderman Klee
Follow up to the Alderman’s question, when you said you were going to be mailing out the new assessment or
the information to them and they could set up a hearing and so on. At that time how large is this taxpayer
manual going to be? Would it be better to send it with it so that they can see?
Bob Tozier
A few dozen pages if not larger. It would be tricky to send out 15,000 of those.
Alderman Dowd
Sort of an unrelated. We're getting towards the budget season again. We're going to be having a discussion
on CERF. Typically we get into the budget discussion and we talk CERF. This year especially with a lot of
new members who don’t know anything about CERF, could we have in the near term an overview of the CERF
account and how we're intending to look at it going forward. The CERF account looks at vehicles over a
number of years. That’s very difficult to look at with that one night that we have on the budget to look at that
CERF account. | think if we had a prelude to that, it would make it a lot easier for other people to understand.
Mayor Donchess
Yes definitely we can arrange that.
