Board of Aldermen 12-10-2019 Page 8
People were waiting for it and watching, how are they going? And then they started calling their Wards and
saying, “OH are they going to get to mine, we are running out of time and the abatements aren’t done”.
People watched. | want to track these permits. Now the Mayor went to a Budget Meeting and he said at
the Budget Meeting, when he said these right-to-knows were killing us and Mrs. Ortolano is causing a lot of
problems and causing us to run up our bills and we have to hire outside people. We have several thousand
building permits we have to capture in a month. So they open up $50,000.00 to hire outside people; they
couldn’t get anyone to come. So they had to hire KRT. The report that | saw that went to the Board of
Assessors, | believe said, and don’t hold me to it, KRT took care of 250 or 300 residential permits to close,
ran around and took care of those. But there were, | thought, a couple thousand. So what happened to the
others? Did they end up getting closed, how were they handled? Did we close out the tax bills, the
property record cards without being able to capture those? How many were left open that weren’t captured
from last year? We don’t know and nobody will speak to that.
I’ve asked the Board of Assessors, “can you find that out’. Ask that question; no interest. Sales Data for
MLS correcting, great we have those tools, | am thrilled we have that technique to do that. But when they
take the sales data and they are supposed to capture it, how do we know what they do? There’s no report.
We had an audit come out that showed that we had tremendous management weaknesses. We produced
a new Policy Manual and the entire Manual is completely deficient on any management objectives. How
could we be so critical of management and then create a new manual with no management objectives?
You got rid of the Chief, you are bringing him back, that’s fine. But the whole intention at the time was the
Directorship was going to the management oversight, that’s fine. Then write a manual that says what the
reports are going to be that are going to be run quarterly, half-year, yearly that are going to show the
accountability that we are expecting in an Assessing Office; no data.
| have asked the Board of Assessors to please produce something in the Policy Manual that gives a list of
the reports that are available to the public. They are not willing to do that. That leaves me in a bind
because when | am looking for data and | write to Legal, | get bounced out of the City because | don’t know
the name of the reports, | am not specific enough and | don’t know what they are called. | end up working
with the State, the State is much more compliant. The Board of Assessors is a nightmare. They may all be
nice men but the sum of the parts does not make a whole and their underperformance is overwhelming me.
| learned that they take their model from the Zoning Board. | went to a Zoning Board meeting maybe a
month ago. | realized that they are reading the script of the Zoning Board when they run the meeting now in
Board of Assessors; and it changed since I’ve been going.
My observation is the Zoning Board is a pretty together Board like the Assessing Board they have a Policy
Manual or a Regulations Manual that | am sure is several thousand pages thick. A lot of regulations in
Zoning, a lot of regulations in Assessing OK? They read the same words at the beginning of the meeting,
“If you have questions direct them to us, we will answer your questions” you know “here’s our format”.
They are very open. | go in | spend two hours in a meeting over there, they start it off introducing
themselves, they ask the public “does anyone have any questions before we start”. They bring each
member up that is presenting a variance or a request. Those people dialogue with the Board, they answer
their questions, the end the discussion. They have an open meeting where they dialogue very effectively
on why they approve it or do not approve it. They allow more discussion, they ask the public for input and
then the next person comes up, very efficient, very well done.
Now | am not going to tell you that Board is perfect, because the mark of a really good Board for me is how
they handle a problem. How do they handle dissention? How do they handle somebody who thinks
something isn’t done right? That to me is a real mark. | didn’t see any of that that night but | did see a
Board that worked very effectively with the public. That does not happen and has not happened once in a
year at a Board of Assessor's meeting. They read every meeting “We will answer your questions, should
you have them” and then they proceed to answer nothing. The last Board of Assessor’s meeting | wrote
them an e-mail; couple of basic questions. When is the List & Measure Starting? Has the contract been
signed? Will the company vision have a form for people who do not allow them to enter their home? |
noticed on line that some appraisal companies, knowing they can’t get entry, have a pretty nice form that
allows you to give details to the Assessors on your home should you not allow entry.
