Board of Aldermen 08-13-2019 Page 4
As | said for reasons not entirely clear to us, in June they decided to open a docket to explore whether
Nashua was doing things correctly within the Assessing Department: whether there were failings that led
to inequities and disproportionalities within the Department. So we had that Hearing a week ago today. |
should say that by every statistical measure that the International Association of Assessing Officials has
in standards that they have set, we meet them all. Those same standards have been adopted by the NH
Assessing Standards Board, we meet them all. Over the last 15 years at five year intervals, the NH
Department of Revenue Administration and their Municipal & Property Division, does a study of our and
all the other municipalities; does a study on our assessment records. It is a statistically significant
number of samples and checks those records for accuracy. If one card fails, we still meet the standard.
If two cards fail, we flunk; we have never failed, never.
In-between those 5 year intervals, there’s a much less strenuous review; we’ve not failed those as far as
our property records are concerned. 10 years there was an issue whether the former assessor had filed
complete compliance report following the revaluation that that employee did. Again, no problem with the
information as to individual pieces of property. Now we explained all of this, we had the assessor from
Manchester not in our instance, not as a City favor to us, completely on his own the assessor for
Manchester who is highly qualified, he is a member of the Assessing Standards Board, he is previous
employee of the Department of Revenue Administration. He spoke and said if the municipality meets all
the standards which Nashua does, | am very worried, both as the Chief Assessor in Manchester and a
member of the Assessing Standards Board, what are you using for criteria? If you can do that to them, |
should be worried that you are going to do it to my community next. So we are hopeful as to how this
exploration will come out.
But | did let them know that Nashua was considering and basically had plans to do a Full Measure & List
for tax year 2022. Frankly this is something that | have recommended for approximately 2 years now. So
the suggestion that this is a knee-jerk reaction to some of the criticism that that Department has been
subjected to over the last 10 months is inaccurate. As the Mayor said before, 30 years is a long time
without undertaking the Full Measure & List process. It is called a Full Measure & List because there is in
fact measurements done to confirm the square footage, listing refers to listing the attributes of a particular
property. In residential properties the number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, square footage of the
home, does it have special amenities, special features, tennis courts, basketball courts, whatever else
might be, central air conditioning that sort of thing.
If we do not undertake this, | think we are going to see some pushback from the Department of Revenue
Administration who will encourage the Board of Tax & Land Appeals to order us to do this. | think there is
some wiggle room in the law as to whether we could fight that; | don’t recommend that we do. It is
something that we ought to do anyway; but we ought to do it of our volition rather than wait until we are
ordered. The primary reason for that is it will be more strenuous; we won't just be ordered to do it, they
will want to monitor it every step of the way. They will want to add requirements perhaps that are not
ordinarily required. These things have every likelihood of costing us more money, delaying and delay
costs money as well. | happen to think that we have a good set of data currently. But you always run into
the “Well when is the last time you did a Full Measure & List”.
By the time this comes around, if we go forward with it and do it for 2022, we will be 31 years old. If we
don’t do it, the number will get higher and higher. People start looking at you with a little more
skepticism. If | go in and I’ve got the Pheasant Lane Mall appealing or something, I’d like to be able to
say “we are as accurate as we can be and we just did a Full Measure & List within the last few years’. |
think in the long run, the expenditure will be well worth it. And it is not spend $1.3 million or spend
nothing; by 2023 at a minimum we have to do a statistical evaluation, that is going to cost more than half
that $1.3 by itself. So you might as well do it right every few decades then put it off any longer. Sol am
with the Mayor on this and | am certainly going to be here all evening so any questions feel free.
