Board of Aldermen 11-12-2019 Page 14
But | put together this book that | sent up to the DRA and | sent the report to the assessors today. This is
all the data that they didn’t capture, 272 qualified homes, that were very nicely done, pictures that are
beautiful, updates, granite kitchens, new baths, tiled, stainless steel appliances, lovely, lovely homes. They
didn’t get touched. What was their value? So it was 272 properties that valued $80 million. 27 properties
valued $8.7; a tenfold difference. These 272 homes saw a tax increase of $180.00 a year compared to the
27 that were totally screwed by the City and had to incur $2,000.00 a year. That’s what happened to us; |
can’t help but tell you how strongly | feel that we don’t have competent people down there.
Now | am pulling all of the 2014 data for the year. | sent this all up to the State. | said, “This is all the data,
this is everything, this is all the sales data on 1,023 properties; 821 were qualified sales”. That’s a good
take of data. They are running an accuracy rate of about 60%; the Assessing Standard Board requires that
their property data capture be at 90% or better. On this 19 month piece of data, it was about 60%; that is
horrendous. It is so unfair, I've asked you at this Board 2 or 3 times, I’ve said to the Board of Assessors,
“Shut down that MLS correcting, don’t do it, because you are really screwing people and you are not doing
it fairly”. That is what has happened here. | am mortified by this, | really am. | think that we haven't
addressed manpower, nice to see a Chief, but you have not addressed manpower issues. | am very
disappointed in the Budget Hearing | watched in September where the Ms. Kleiner and the Mayor came out
and asked for $50,000.00 because of Right to Know requests. Clemons, Tencza, Schmidt, who else is in
there, a couple others, nobody asked meaningful questions. What is your manpower to cover 2,000
permits? | pulled the work log and data for the one assessor who has been in question because | wanted
to see what is that assessor doing with permits? Not going out at all to capture permits. Why didn’t
somebody ask is everyone doing permit work? That answer would have been “no”. Instead of blaming the
public for putting forward Right to Know requests, why don’t you address your manpower and look at what
they are able to do; because you don’t have the manpower to grab these permits. Once again, people are
getting taxed on them and then there’s a whole slew that don’t get caught and they get a pass.
All of this update that goes on, is dependent on the quality of the data and how you maintain it. Outside of
an update, there’s very few things you can do. You can use sales data to correct a property card, you can
use permit data to adjust and abatements. You can occasionally go after a segment of properties that you
want to adjust but that is almost never done and | don’t know of a case where it has been done here. You
have very limited means to make changes, but you have means and you are using them so ineffectively,
inaccurately and non-uniformly that you have created a mess in your data. It is just unbelievable to me that
it took 10,000 data points and data scraping at this level to be able to prove that Celia Leonard’s position
that we are cherry picking is really not the case at all.
| do not know if the RSA’s apply to the public, | need a lawyer to answer that, but the RSA through the ASB
that puts 90% accuracy on the data. When | measure all of the sales data and | see 60%, can we do
anything about that? Can the public complain and say we are not meeting our standards? | don’t know, |
don’t know if | have any grounds. But! can tell you it is not good enough. In 2014 you only had 400
property sales. You are asking two assessors to each correct 1 home a day four times a week, not even all
week. You’re not capturing that data, what is the excuse? It’s not like they’re bombed, it’s not like they are
busy with thousands of property sales; it was a slow economy and we didn’t capture the data. | had to pay
$5,000.00 more but a lot of houses didn't.
President Wilshire
Ms. Ortolano, one minute for public comment, thank you.
Ms. Ortolano |’m all set, thank you.
President Wilshire
Thank you.
