Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 12
Attorney Bolton
They could have been listed, they don’t have the authority to hire and fire for example, but they have the
authority to overrule the recommendations of the staff | think they do so advisedly when they do. But they are
not merely a rubber stamp either. They work with the professional staff to arrive at proper assessments and
proper decisions on abatement requests.
Ms. Kleiner
So |’ll answer as to why they weren’t in the organizational chart. We did not look, although we looked at
information that was being fed from our internal department to the Board of Assessors, when | talked about
looking about their Board Packets and the way abatements were written up and presented and that sort of thing.
We did not include them in the management audit as we did not interview them. We were looking at our internal
staff, our internal department and how it functions. Certainly that could have been looked at but it was not in the
scope of our audit to review the Board of Assessors.
Alderman Jette
When we look at hiring an Administrative Services Director and giving that Director the job of overseeing the
Assessing Department, | am wondering if we shouldn’t take a broader look at where the Board of Assessors fits
in here. Shouldn't they be supervising the Department and the Administrative Services Director is the
Administrative Services Director going to be able to, you know, is one person with all the other stuff | hear you
talking about, the Administrative Services Director being assigned, shouldn’t we have a Chief Assessor under
the Board of Assessors? | don’t know the answer, I’m just raising the questions. And whether or not — and what
about the City Treasurer and Tax Collector? Where does he fit into this?
Attorney Bolton
The City Treasurer and Tax Collector receives a warrant every year from the Board of Assessors and that
warrant essentially lists all of the properties and sets a value on all of the properties. A form called the MS1 is
transmitted to the State Department of Revenue Administration and very simply the State looks at what the City
needs, what its budget is, what it is going to have to pay for its share of the County Budget, County Expenses,
subtracts revenue from other sources and then says — Ok, we’ve got to get so much from the property tax, does
the division the value of the taxable property divided by into what you need to raise, they transmit back tax rate
they have calculated to the Treasurer and Tax Collector. The Tax Collector then sends out the bills, multiplying
the assessed value times the property tax rate. As the money comes in the Treasurer has superintendence
over that money and invests it wisely we hope and when it is needed to pay bills, it is there.
Alderman Jette
So talking about the full measure and list, personally | think it is very important that everyone in the City feel that
they are being treated fairly, that their taxes are fair compared to everybody else, you know, their share is fair.
And | think a key element of that is that their property is being appropriately assessed and it is fair compared to
everybody else. And | think doing part of that is keeping up with the assessment, you know, doing a full
evaluation where you do look at the properties in detail and you are not just doing a statistical analysis like we
just did.
So we are going to have to do another revaluation in 5 years; | know other cities do this constantly, they don't,
you know if you wait 5 years and then you try to do everything at once, | think it is a much more major project
and probably more expensive. If we kept up with it, if we did like you know every year we did a fifth of the City
and so that we would be keeping up, you know? | don’t know if that could be done internally or not, | don’t know
what the costs would be compared if we did, if we hired sufficient staff to do this on an on-going basis, whether
