Board of Aldermen 05-14-2019 Page 42
regarding your concerns about the Administrative Services Director’. | went to that meeting and |
watched whoever was chairing it acknowledge that several letters had been received and put them on
the record, but mine was never acknowledge, because | probably didn’t, | guess | had to ask for it. But
it seems to me there are e-mails you are given and you should acknowledge them or they should go
on the record somewhere. It wasn’t as if | didn’t give thoughtful attention to that.
Thirdly Right to Know Law. | think we’ve done a really poor job in this City of addressing Right To
Know. You know when | look back October/November and | wrote a request to John Griffin trying to
access information, one of the things | asked for were the expense logs, the travel logs. | knew that
there was a log system down there that was supposed to tie to the expense report. | didn’t Know the
specific name but | asked for the log. What | received back is no such information existed; but in fact
that wasn’t true. Logs do exist and they tie. And Kim had pointed it out when at the last month she
asked all of the assessors to start stapling the log to the expense report. Cool, good idea. And then |
had the name of it, the full name, you know, expense mileage reimbursement log. But just because as
a resident or a citizen on the outside you don’t know the formal name and you are asking without
saying RTK but asking. It should have been given to me and what came back was a letter that went to
all of you at an Aldermen Meeting with the answer that “no such logs exist”. They existed and | could
have had that information a lot sooner and | could’ve been looking at this travel information because |
went to Mr. Griffin and | said to him after collecting 3 years of data, “your travel logs look fraudulent,
you’ve got a fraud issue in here”.
There’s a problem especially with one that is grossly out of line. | was told they would get back to me,
he would get back to me in a week and he did not. And then | asked for those logs and was told none
exist.
| am going to be RTK’ing for them again. Let’s see what we come up with. But | feel like you are not
fully honest about that type of information. And | am now going to also try and find out what is the
name of every report you print in assessing. There are a lot of reports you can print. Just because |
don’t know the names shouldn’t mean that | can’t get them. | don’t know how to request them because
| don’t know their titles. | sat in a meeting with Ms. Kleiner on Friday, she had a whole sales sheet
done up of a bunch of data. | am going to RTK that but | don’t know what it’s called. What is that
sales data? | know I’ve generated my own, but | have no idea what that report is. So somehow we’ve
got to get a list of all the reports that are being generated so that the public can see all these reports as
well. So somebody help me figure that out. Thanks.
REMARKS BY THE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN
Alderman Klee
I’d like to address a couple of things. First I'd like to address Mr. O’Connor’s comments about filling
the Chief Assessor position. | have full confidence in whether people think I’m over-complimenting or
not, | have full confidence that Mrs. Kleiner will in fact eventually fill the Chief Assessors. | don’t know,
| have not spoken to her about it, | do think it would be a good position to do. Right at the moment |
think we’ve had enough change, I'd like to get things moving. A lot of information has come but that’s
one of the feelings that | have on it but yes | do believe that eventually we do need a Chief Assessor. |
think each of the departments should have a Director or at least a lead assessor, whether it’s above
and beyond the four or one of the four. | think we do need something like that, | think that would be
putting too much pressure on Mrs. Kleiner to hold that position as well. Thank you.
Alderman Lopez
| just wanted to thank Paul Shea and Great American Downtown for the work they did with the Nu
Muse Festival. It was a great event and | think it was enjoyed by many. And | also just wanted to
remind the public that the Gate City Marathon is coming up on Sunday so there will be some traffic
delays and a lot of tired people running around.
