Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 2
certainly identify any errors that might have existed with respect to the external portions of the structures, the
size, the decks and all that.
We have received about 250 or something less than 300 abatement requests. This is a typical number for the
revaluations that have been done over the years. As you know this was a State-ordered revaluation; the State
Law says that every City and Town has to do one every 5 years. This was conducted in 2018 and the last
revaluation was in 2013. So the number of abatement requests that the City has received is typical for the last
few, except that in 2005 which was several revaluations ago there were 1,500 abatement requests at that time.
And when the last full measure and list was done which was in the early 90’s, I’m not sure of the number, but
there were a lot, a lot more than 300. So | don’t think that anything out of the ordinary has occurred with respect
to people seeking, thinking or believing that their new assessment is incorrect and seeking a review of the
decision through the process that is available to them which is of course the Board of Assessors then to the
Board of the Land & Tax Appeals at the State Level or the Superior Court.
Of course everybody has a right to file an abatement and anybody who disagrees with their assessment
hopefully will have done that. Certainly reasonable people can often disagree about what an assessment is; it is
a science but not an exact one, especially when we are talking about more properties that are more unique,
properties that aren’t exactly like the house or the condo next door. There are often good faith disagreements
about what assessment should be and that is the reason for the appeal process; so that someone who is
outside the City or outside the Assessing Office and ultimately outside the City can review the facts and
determine what the proper assessment, at least in their judgement, should be.
There are a number of | think significant recommendations made in the audit. One of those involve, and you'll
get the details from Mr. Griffin and Ms. Kleiner, but the larger ones that | thought were worth mentioning myself
are as you know, the audit recommended that we eliminate the Chief Assessor position and instead return to
the system of, and | will discuss this in a little more detail, of having many of the departments in City Hall that
work together, run by a new administrative services director. The Administrative Services Director is a position
that was first established during the administration of Maurice Arel in the late 70’s to help bring more effective
management to City Hall Departments. The City Administrative Services Director as the audit recommends
would oversee a number of internal functions as it did before, Assessing, Personnel, Purchasing, Risk, the City
Clerk and others that are within City Departments, GIS, IT. The Administrative Services Director was a position
in City Government through the Administration of Maurice Arel, through my first administration, through Wagner,
Davidson and Streeter.
Then Mayor Lozeau early in her tenure decided that at least in the way she wanted to run City Government, this
was not a necessary position and she preferred to have something called City Stat and the Administrative
Services position was removed and instead a City Stat Director was established. Then after a few years,
apparently it was decided that City Stat was not necessary and for cost savings measures that position was
removed. But the Administrative Services Director was not re-established. Now the people who have served in
that position over the years have tended to be people who know City Government very well, but who have had a
business background or some management background. The first Administrative Services Director who served
for some period of time was Russ Marcoux who had been on the Board of Aldermen, he had worked for Purity
Supreme and had an accounting background. He moved on and later Maureen Lemieux came in as
Administrative Services Director after having served | think a short time on the Board of Aldermen, someone
with another business accounting background. Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja probably knows her from Ward 8.
She served with | think very great skill for quite a while, but when the position was phased out, she took a job as
CFO | believe for the City of Newton, Massachusetts and still works there and very successfully.
So that is the history of the position. The point here is to, and | will address the assessing function in a minute,
but the point is, at least of what we proposed now, is a few things. Number one, all of these functions needs to
work effectively together, IT, Assessing, GIS, the Building & Planning people as well. These are people who
need to work together in order for City Government to function most effectively. When the Administrative
Services Position was eliminated, all of these functions were transferred to the CFO, in our case Mr. Griffin. The
