Board of Aldermen 12-10-2019 Page 9
| received no response. | am hoping they will discuss it when | go to the meeting, no response. Why is that
a secret? Why is it a secret to know when the List & Measure is starting? Why is it a secret to know
whether the contract has been signed? The City had said to me when | asked for the contract through
Legal, of course, it got forced up there, when | asked for it six weeks ago it wasn’t signed. And they
wouldn’t leave it open for me, | think | told you this. They said, “Lori, you just have to keep submitting
Right-To-Knows every couple of weeks until it is done”. Well that seems like a waste of time, I’m using
Legal’s time, they are tallying up the numbers, I’m writing the same thing, because they won’t tell me. So |
called the State, and | said, “Will you tell me when it comes up there for your approval” and they said,
“Definitely”. Hasn’t been sent up yet, | talked to them today, good. But | don’t have to keep writing Right-
To-Knows to the State to figure it out. | have to do that to my City. It is ridiculous and basic questions like
this should be answered by the Board. | am so underwhelmed by this Board. And | don’t see where there
has been any development by the City, the NH Municipal Association, the State, to come in, do training and
get this Board up to speed. We are spinning ourselves to nowhere.
Accessing the property record cards; the 2018 cards are on-line and we all know that by June or so of this
year we put property cards on-line. That was awesome, I’m super appreciative of that. I’ve been waiting for
the 2019 property cards to come on-line. They were due on-line mid-November. And | asked the end of
October when they were coming out, mid-November. Well it is December 10" and they are not out. | asked
a couple days ago, e-mailed down to Assessing, “when are the 2019 property record cards going to be on-
line”. | got a response back, “We don’t know’. It is an unacceptable answer to me, OK. Somebody find out
when or why, are we talking a month, are we talking three months. Here’s the problem, abatements are
coming in for 2019, | always follow that schedule, | go to all the meetings, | want the property record cards
to track them but they are not on-line OK? Now | have got to go to City Hall and | start printing, | also want
the permit and sales data for 2019. We are going into 2020 in two weeks. | have to get the data, you are
behind, I’m OK with that but | want to be able to look at it. It is not available. So | either have to go into City
Hall and the sales, the permit and the abatement data will cost me probably $2,500.00 by record card or try
to get it on a thumb drive which they say in the manual they can do. But Kim Kleiner e-mailed me tonight
and said she’s not certain they can. It’s unacceptable.
And the e-mail really points out that they are busy, the property record cards are created through Archive
Pro, a software purchased this past summer. Our IT Department is working with a vendor, we apologize for
any inconvenience, with the AP5 upgrade sales inspection and the issuing of December tax bills, both
Departments are working effectively and as efficiently as possible. | will inquire IT into the possibility of the
28,000 property record cards on a thumb drive. Your manpower and staffing issues are your issue and |
have asked you to look into these. Nobody will do that. The property tax bills went out a month ago, | don’t
see how property tax bills are affecting the department to put on the new software or to put on the new
property cards. We already purchased the software, | really don’t know what the hang-up is, but what you
are telling me is, the data is no longer available, go into City Hall and start printing again and pay out-of-
pocket, because that’s the best we can do. And it is not acceptable. You are very understaffed in
Assessing, you lost your clerical coordinator, there’s no sign or evidence that you are going to hire a new
one, there is no job posting. What are we doing to fill that position? You don’t have a Chief. You have one
Commercial Assessor that seems to be ware housed in the basement, not going out. We lost a data
collector years ago that we never put in there. We don’t have a lot of manpower. And the Mayor’s audit
ordered that a manpower and staffing review be done and it was never done. Why aren’t we looking at
this? Because to me we have a staffing problem and you dangle these carrots to the public saying, “OH we
have got this stuff on line, you can use it” “Oh sorry we are really busy, it’s not there for you, you can’t really
have it, figure something else out”. OK?
Right-To-Know requests, this is hot topic, Ms. Schmidt has done some clever work to try to fix all the City’s
problems; awesome. | put in a Right-to-Know request to get John Duhamel’s e-mails for September and
October of last year. | was really interested in the two months when | was first entering the office and
nobody would talk or work with me. Were they following me, were they tracking me, what was going on,
what did they know about me? Well it turned out to be very interesting, there were well over 100 e-mails
about me. They were very interesting, but when | asked for these e-mails 5 months ago | got a response
back from IT that there were over 1,000 and it was going to take them a long time to go through them.
