Board of Aldermen 10-08-2019 Page 8
We are doing so much wrong with paperwork in my mind and we are doing it to prevent the public from
having access. And | think we can do a much better job. And all these complaints that “Oh you know we
have to spend $50,000.00 on a consultant because we are behind on permits”. That permit stuff is
malarkey. You are behind on permits because you are not staffed correctly and you are not looking at your
permit data the way you should. But all of that is how you are managing your records. | just did a Right To
Know to get the Mayor’s letter that he sent out to the Board for this audit, | never had the letter. And I’m
sure that cost me $500.00 to get that from the City; to go to Legal, to have a meeting, pull the document,
look at it and send it to me. That’s unfortunately but | don’t know how else to get it. If it was in the record it
would be awesome. If it had been part of the minutes it would be great, | could get it. But the letters aren’t
part of the record. So | get it and when | looked at that one of the things, the Mayor wrote a number of
things that this report was going to do and one of them was cover staffing. They were going to address the
staffing and the management of the Assessing Office. | have been a big critic that that audit report never
addressed staffing. Why didn’t we look at staffing in the office? That was so fundamentally important in my
mind. We have a tremendous lack of staffing in there and qualified staffing; we are missing qualified
people. And we never did that, we skipped that.
And so you know, | think instead of shooting the messenger over and over and over again, I’d like to see
the City take some responsibility to get on board to making access real for us. Don’t make us have to jump
through hoops, I’m with Celia Leonard, |’m writing 5, 6, 7 Right To Knows for the same data. And what I’m
finding is Legal is sending me the wrong answers and I’m having to go back and pinpoint them to the e-mail
I’m looking for in a server that | know is there that they are saying isn’t. I’m doing 4, 5 and 6 requests for a
single piece of information and | don’t understand why it is so complicated. When | asked for the
Buyer/Seller and Broker letters and | heard it was going to take 4 years | said, “Well let’s make certain they
are there”. And | went back and forth with Legal and said, you know, “I don’t think you have to look in the
files, it should be recorded on the property cards, if they sent a letter, it should be documented”. Legal
says, “No, no, no it is never documented’. | said, “It’s always documented”. | start looking at property cards
with Laura Calhoun. There is no documentation in the cards that letters were sent. So | go back to Legal,
the Clerk in there argues with me, “No we’ve got to look at every file, it’s going to take 4 years to get
through this, we’ve got to do this”. | march down to Assessing and | happen to catch an Assessor at the
printer and | said, “Excuse me, did you send any letters out to Buyers, Sellers and Real Estate Brokers
when you reviewed the sales data”. And his answer was “no”.
President Wilshire
Ms. Ortolano, one minutes to wrap up, please?
Ms. Ortolano Sure. And | asked him to go ask the other three assessors and he literally marched through
the office, | heard him, he asked every assessor, “Did you send them, did you send them, did you send
them” every one of them said “No, we didn’t do it”. | marched up in Legal and | said, “Cancel the request,
nobody sent any letters which is what | thought”. They were going to embark on a four year event and |
said, “I don’t understand why you in Legal didn’t march down to Assessing and say, did you guys do this”.
That was four or five e-mails that went back and forth on that and it never existed. So please come on
board and help make data something that is really accessible to the public. And please do not start this
reevaluation until you hire a Chief. Don’t vote to begin it until you bring in a Chief on who is going to follow
this through for a couple of years. It doesn’t have to be a three-year process, | talked to Bob Gagne, he
wondered why we didn’t do it as a 1-year. Just bid it out as a 1-year. So please, hold off until you bring
somebody in who can run it the way it should be run. Thank you.
REMARKS BY THE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN
Alderman O’Brien
Yes | think on October 25" the Mayor asked if | will go there to go shoot some hoops there. | was a hockey
player but in deep respect | was a little dribbler since | was a kid. So we will see what happens but | will do
