Board of Aldermen 05-14-2019 Page 10
She is an accountant. She’s been an accountant for 22 years before she came to Nashua; she’s been
a Chief of Staff, and a good one to the Mayor, basically taking notes and things, I’ve been to meetings
with the Mayor, taking notes and answering the mail. But has she got the experience to deal with 7
complex departments? Human Resources? Information Technology? GIS? Purchasing?
Insurance? Risk Management? City Buildings? Assessing? $53 million dollars of fund management.
$7 million dollars of operational budget, she has none. So Mayor | don’t understand why you would
appoint her. The real problem, there is no problem in the IT Department that | know of. There’s no
problem in Human Resources. There’s no problem in GIS. There’s no problem in Purchasing.
There’s no problem in Insurance. There’s no problem in Risk Management that | Know of. There’s no
problem in Maintenance & City Buildings. There is a problem in Assessing. And you are not replacing
the Chief Assessor.
Now the guy that was there, | dealt with him, he was incompetent. | knew that right away. | didn’t
complain about it. A private citizen at her own substantial expense brought forth the problem in the
Assessing Department; none of you did. The Mayor didn’t, none of the City staff did, the attorney
didn’t. A private citizen who spent $8,000.00 just on the private investigator. The problem is in the
Assessing Department. Now we hear that there is an assessor who about 10 years ago was dealing in
pornography. That’s what | read and he admitted it. Sleeping on the job; got a PI report. There’s the
problem. A lot of people are complaining about the Assessing; they are not complaining about GIS, IT,
Purchasing, Insurance, Risk Management, City Buildings, they are complaining about Assessing. So |
don’t understand what you are trying to do.
| recommend that you drop this insanity of creating a new division, that'll accomplish nothing but
conflict in fact between the CFO position and a new position. If you look at the Ordinance there are all
kinds of building conflict. And | should say Marcoux, who you keep mentioning was really the CFO. |
was an Alderman. He was a CFO. Carol Anderson who is the budget director, worked for Marcoux.
Now they called him an Administrative Servicer but he was really the Chief Financial Officer, there was
no position called the Chief Financial Officer back in those days. So my recommendation is drop this
charade. Don’t enforce Administrative Services, Ms. Kleiner very well, very nice person, qualified as
an accountant, keep her on the job, she’s doing a nice job for you and get that Assessment
Department under control. Thank you.
Jim Tollner Good evening, Jim Tollner, 1 Sequoia Circle, |’ll be brief. | want to take a second to weigh
in on this appointment. | think it’s worth mentioning that it has always been at the discretion of the
Mayor to recruit and appoint his or her choice. | seems fundamentally unfair to speak against this
particular person because the folks didn’t like how this department was run in other administrations.
Personally | have had a chance to work with Mrs. Kleiner and | have found her to be professional. She
is someone who has worked within City Government and someone who understands City
Government. | have to say when there were questions, we heard back from Kim. And if she didn’t
have the answers, she’d work hard to get you that answer. Thank you very much.
Laurie Ortolano 41 Berkeley Street, I’m here to speak to the Administrative Services Position. | think I'd
like to ask you to just put it on hold and consider bringing back the Chief position. | want you all to think
about whether there is enough money in the budget right now to fund both positions. | would hope
that as Aldermen and Alderwomen, you all recognize at this point the need for a Chief. And | am so
compelled to tell you from the bottom of my heart | think we need that Chief. Assessing is a complex
function and Ms. Kleiner just doesn’t have that background. And when the Mayor points out that she’s
going to be a Director or a Manager, she’s managing all other departments that have directors except
for Assessing. And Paula Johnson was correct when she said the other Administrative Services
Directors, we had a manager down there, we had a Chief. We don’t anymore. And the day-to-day
functions and the issues that Alderwoman Kelly asked are a serious issue.
If you are going to just vote this position in tonight and say she is going to take over Assessing, as a
bare minimum, please move her office down into Assessing, into John Duhamel’s office. Let her work
on the culture and the environment down there day-to-day right now. That’s a 40 hour a week job.
