Special Bd. of Aldermen — 09/24//2019 Page 7
We also have the changes within GIS, so GIS has transferred over to new servers and we have the creation of
the GIS Steering Committee, an adaption of the Strategic Plan that was recommended in the report presented
to you by CDM Smith. So Building, GIS, Assessing, it is a large number of changes occurring, we are very
thankful the IT Department and their support. But there is a lot of testing and a lot of training that is required by
a number of different departments.
On top of all the changes, on top of all the training, what are we currently working on? So this is a list provided
for you of what our administrative staff is currently working on. We are preparing for the MS1 and many of you
may have heard from Finance and Budget meetings that we filed for an extension of the MS1 and our new
deadline is October 11". Of course the AP5 Training & Testing they are continuing an audit of our veteran’s
credits. They are updating AssessPro with BTLA in Superior Court abatement appeals and responding to BTLA
check lists that are required for those appeals. They are processing property transfers and name changes and
filing, everything that is normal within the administrative staff function continues. It has not slowed down; they
provide excellent customer service and | can tell you that I’ve had a number of residents come to me and | am
very, very proud of the customer service that the administrative staff provides. Some of you may have heard
that as well. | was at the DRA in a training last week and | heard it up there from members of the DRA on some
of our staff members and they are really looked at as some of the experts in their field. Quite often they are
called from other communities for questions and answers to things. They also print and process all the monthly
building reports and of course schedule the assessors and complete the data entry when they return. They QC
all of the information that is entered by our assessors.
What are the assessors working on right now? Well you’ve all heard pick up of building permits for file capture
prior to October 11". That’s the number one function right now. They also have a sales qualification that’s
mandatory for the DRA Ratio Study. They provide responses to petitions of the appeals at the Hillsborough
Superior Court and the BTLA. They work very closely with Legal on all of those cases. They answer tax payer’s
requests for inspections and inquires and work on the on-going litigation that | mentioned. They review the
exemptions and the credit applications and sign off on those. They have their own review of the MS1 that is
required and they have their own training for AP5.
So while all of this was happening, we processed in 2019 for 2018 406 abatements. I’m sure as the Board of
Assessor can attest, this kept us quite busy. They had all these appear before them; approved was 171 and
denied was 213, 22 PSNH remain with Legal. They also had a total of 959 exemptions to process. So these
are applications that require a great deal of examination of documents and to make that they have completed all
the information and that they can give a recommendation to the Board of Assessors. We have so far received
to the BTLA 6 residential taxpayer’s appeals and 52 commercial. | think that soeaks somewhat to the success of
the revaluation, when you only have 6 appeals to the BTLA. But that is my own opinion. To Superior Court, we
have 28 commercial currently and that number includes PSNH.
This is a project that we brought to you in April, we talked about how the Assessing Office really needed to
undergo a redesign. This plan was created, it was reviewed by City Buildings and the Risk Department. We will
work towards cost estimates but it was require an RFP. The main purpose is really the Customer Service that
the office provides. So currently the office is not handicapped accessible and neither is there a lot of information
for assisting tax payers at the counter. Some of the information that we discuss during an exemption or an
appeal or a credit is information on income. These residents may not feel comfortable discussing this out in a
general customer service area. So the plan does include creating a couple of cubicles within the conference
room in assessing so that these discussions could be held more privately. Currently they are taking these
residents out into the hallway if they need to sit and review and we would recommend that is probably not best
practice. This will have more information to come but as City Buildings looks at the plan and does some more
measurements and an RFP is put together, we will bring that back.
