Board of Aldermen 05-14-2019 Page 11
She’s got the other 25 to do the other 5 or 6 functions and that’s going to make up the 65 hours. But |
really believe you need that. I’ve been taking the State’s Statutes class this week with Ms. Kleiner up
in Concord. It has been super interesting. But you meet people up there and speakers who are Chiefs
and Managers from other Towns that are so intelligent and passionate about their work. And it leaves
me feeling a little broken that we can’t find anyone like that for Nashua. Why can’t we find anyone who
is a numbers person who is passionate about equity. Why does that allude Nashua? You know what
it is about the culture here that doesn’t allow that to happen. And if what the Mayor keeps telling you,
that we can’t find candidates, then | beg you to please look at outsourcing, because it isn’t fair to us as
residents to have such a weak department where the bar is so low that you can’t get answers to
questions. Raising that bar is going to be enormously difficult; | think it will be more than 40 hours a
week.
And the last gentleman who spoke has had a wonderful experience getting questions answered. It is
far more difficult for us with Assessing questions because we are dealing with somebody who has no
background for something so technical. Those questions require her to call the State every time and
she can’t even rely on her people internally to go down there and get the answers and she told me she
doesn’t, which | am thankful for. We should not be taking any information from within at this point, not
a good idea. So you know | think it is vitally important that we bring back that Chief position. And |
don’t want to wait until Ms. Kleiner says its important, we will just wait until she decides we need it. Or
we wait until you decide we need it. How does that happen. What does it take to decide you need it?
You know what do we have to do? | for myself can tell you there’s no amount of data that | can put on
the table that would convince there’s a problem that hasn’t worked.
| will tell you Friday | had a meeting and Steve Bolton acknowledged that some of the numbers | was
pointing out were too low. | honestly believe that in 8 % months that is the first time an administrator or
somebody in City Hall said “yeah those numbers are too low’. I’ve never had anyone confirm
anything. | mean it has taken 8 1/ 2 months to get the confirmation on a number. And | think I’ve gone
way too long waiting for answers, just way too long. You know the problems are deep and what you
have happening now, | am sensing the complaints that you are getting hit with a lot of RTK letters,
property files, you are. I’m generating a good bit of it. I’m going to dump another 1,000 pages on you
pretty quickly here for RTK. You know why? Because | am conducting your external audit because
none of you did it. It was your job to do an external audit and the internal one really didn’t work. |
prefer not to do that, | have to pay a lot of money for those copies — Ben | am hoping you write that
letter and waive those for me. But that’s what needs to be done.
And | object to an Alderman like Ben Clemons sending out an e-mail telling me this weekend that |
need to prove myself more, get all the reimbursements, get all the travel cards, get all of the
information out of City Hall to prove that we have mismanagement. When do you step up and look at
the data? When do you go get it? Because | have to RTK all that. | have to put staff through a lot of
work to get that. I’d rather let you do your investigation and really get the information. Do it, get it, look
at the reports, just let me know you're doing it. | won’t ask for it. But | don’t know how anyone thinks
here that they can really run this place without having a Chief down there.
You know | sat in a class yesterday and the Chief Assessor who taught for the afternoon ran a Tri-
Town up by Lake Sunapee, Sunapee, New London and Newbury | think. He was so impressive. He
was aman of numbers and you could tell he really loved his job. And the one comment he said is “I
love a really intelligent property owner who comes in and challenges me with questions; it makes me a
better assessor’. We haven’t had any one like that in our assessing office in a long time. You can’t go
in there with a question, there’s nobody to answer. So please, | don’t mind that you want to bring the
position back but boat them together and bring back your Chief Assessor. If you really don’t think you
can get one, get serious about out-sourcing that Department so we can get some equity in this town.
Thank you.
