Special Bd. of Aldermen — 04/30/2019 Page 5
Once the Chief Assessor position was eliminated funding was removed from the proposed Fiscal 2020 budget,
Department 132 and $55,000.00 was added for what we saw as a need for consulting services moving forward.
We began evaluating current operations, instituted weekly staff meetings, a weekly update on metrics, reviews
with assessors on abatements and creation of a mind map. So a mind map is something that | have used in my
prior business when | have done management audits before and started to implement improvement plans. It is
really nothing more than a visual tool; it helps you structure the information and better analyze, comprehend,
recall and generate new ideas.
So this is the Assessing Improvement Mind Map that we have created. If you look, there is really some main
areas that were addressed in the management audit that we knew we need to make some changes. One of
them being internal policies which you’ve heard a lot about; that process has started. It does include us reaching
out to other municipalities and other experts in gaining best practices and best policies. This book here is a book
of policies that have already existed in some form down in the Assessing Department. It was important that we
went through these and reviewed these first to see where they were before we started doing a gap analysis and
realizing what policies may be lacking.
We then reached out and thankful to KRT, we have received Standards on Mass Appraisal, Best Practices,
Understanding Your Property Taxes; this is on many other municipality’s sites. It has some good information in it,
we are looking at that, we are looking at information from the IAAO. There is wealth of information out there;
there’s a wealth of different experts out there. This is a process that is going to be on-going through most of the
summer. This is not something | would recommend that you do in haste and you really need to reach out to
professionals and experts which | will say | am not expert in assessing and never said that | thought | would be
so that is why we reach out to the experts. And some of our staff is certainly some of that knowledge. So | am
going to ask — Louise is responsible for updating our metrics that we have put in place.
Ms. Brown
So this is a sample of tracking the work that is being done in our Department: this is a small list. The items
include admin staff and assessors assisting tax payers at the counter. So this past week was 48 but when we
have exemption and credit season that number is well over 100 on the people coming in. Preparing for final
capture as we mentioned before, building permit pickups and data entry for assessors, we are trying to get as
much done as we can to prepare for file capture. So data entry this past week was 159; building permits closed
by assessors 52; closed by admin staff was 174; print and sort and distribute building permits for prior month is
255; review under construction is 55. And as you see at the bottom there review and process abatements, that is
the current status of the abatements as of the 5/2/19 meeting, the next Board meeting. So we have pending 299;
approved 60; and denied 20. So once this time frame with the file capture is over, the assessors will move right
back into processing abatements.
Ms. Kleiner
So there has been a lot of discussion about a form that we have instituted within the Department and that form
part of the process is to be able to collect data. So in order for me to understand how our staff is currently being
divided out and what their work load currently is; we are reviewing metrics like that. VWWhere do we need more,
where do we not? Where are our peaks and our lows in our work load? That is important. | was asked
yesterday if | am restricting information to the public and | want to be very clear, | am not restricting any
information to the public. But we have had a large number of requests; more than the staff has ever seen in 20
years of the Assessing Department. It makes it difficult for staff to work on some of those statutory requirements
of meeting the abatements and all the elderly exemptions and credits that the residents of Nashua deserve to be
processed.
