Special Bd. of Aldermen — 09/24//2019 Page 4
But for the time being, we have letters this year that have gone out for the $20,000.00 and we are going to
maintain that for now.
Research of Best Practices and Consulting; so as many of you know, there was $50,000.00 included in the
budget in Assessing for consulting. This was important especially when we eliminated the Chief Assessor job.
We are taking use of those funds. We are consulting with David Cornell, who is an Assessing Expert. He has
been extremely helpful and very knowledgeable. | have to say that Assessing is a very special field, itis
amazing how knowledgeable and how helpful assessors from different communities have been. They have
reached out to let us know that they are there if we have any technical questions. They have provided their
contact information to us. We have taken use of that a few times. We are also, in the Legislation before you,
have the request for some tablets. Why the tablets are important is that this is going to create efficiency within
the Department. We will load the new AssessPro5 Software on to the tablets. This will allow assessors to make
real-time changes to our system right out in the field. So currently, they have a property card, it is written, they
make changes and they write them down, they bring them back and either they enter them into the system or
the administrative staff helps and enters them into the system. So the changes that we can just incorporate right
there in the field will provide efficiency.
We also have a number of different areas where we are looking at efficiency now. We are looking at the
property cards as we move to AP5 and we are trying to figure out what information needs to be added to the
card, what information needs to maybe be removed from the card because it is not useful to the tax payers but it
still needs to be seen by the assessors. So we are making those types of changes. We also have a property
card revision notification, so we include the property card in the mailing to residents when an abatement is either
approved or denied by the Board of Assessors. This allows them to look at the property card and see if any
data corrections have been made during that process or to question maybe why the denial or the approval has
been made. That was not done prior; prior they just received a letter.
Procedures and Communication; so in addition to the weekly assessor meetings, we also have a weekly
meeting with all staff members. We review data, we review work load, we review procedures, changes in
policies or directives, just general information that all of the staff needs to know. These are important and these
weren't being done and this was an issue that we brought up during the Management Audit. You need to have
widespread communication within any function. They have been very useful. There have been times, | will
admit, especially during the abatement process in July, that the abatements took first slot and we actually had to
postpone some of our weekly staff meetings because the assessors had appointments and needed to be out in
the field. So during July, we did a lot of catch up and passing information from word of mouth but those
abatements had to be done and that was our priority.
| am also providing departmental updates to the Board of Assessors at each meeting. These are generally in
writing. | think | may have shared a couple of them with the Board of Aldermen especially when it was talking
about the number of abatements and things that we were having. But of course you can find them in the review
of minutes from the Board of Assessor’s meeting. The Board of Assessors are currently undergoing a review of
their By-Laws. So as you know, we had the appointment by Mayor Donchess of Mr. Bergeron this summer and
after he joined the Board, they began reviewing their bylaws and they are currently in that process.
It has been asked how there is any control of assessment changes within the Department; what type of review
and audit is being undertaken? So there is a report, it’s called Assessment Audit Report and both Louise Brown
and | have access to that and we run that periodically. | am informed of assessment changes over $20,000.00
as | said, we have these weekly assessor meetings, we discuss large cases. But! also run these audit logs and
| review those and what do they tell me? They tell me the change that’s been made to any building, the change
that’s been made to any land, and the change in total. So if | have questions, if any of those look like | need to
inquire on further information | do and the Assessors walk me through those changes.
