Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 16
training and you can get certain knowledge, you can rely on consultants and professionals with expertise, will
that person know where to get that information? That is important. But! doubt very much you are going to find
one individual who is an assessor, worked in IT, been a purchaser, dealt with insurance, and been a City Clerk.
If you do that is not the strength of the position. The strength of the position is to be able to manage functions
efficiently.
Alderman Klee
| am not sure my comments here are questions as much as comments. Going back to the permits, and | know
this does not fall under the assessors, but for transition and to help. And | also know that if someone pulls a
$25,000.00 permit it may really only bring up the assessment by $5,000.00 and | understand that’s a situation.
But when a permit is pulled and an inspection is done because | did go up there and | talk to them many many
months ago about how they do this. They say when a permit is pulled, depending upon the permit, sometimes
they have to go in incremental times to make sure certain things are done. And then finally do a final inspection
and sign off on that permit and that’s when it would get transmitted to the assessors. But when that happens
and this may be to you Attorney Bolton but when that is done, would it be legal or appropriate for pictures to be
taken for this information to be the visual, kind of the inspection that they do, to be sent on to the Assessor’s
Office to help them in the assessment? | know that this person is not an assessor so they can’t say the value is
up by this, but if they could give that information. And that’s why | said this more may be a comment and an
idea.
And following up on that at the time and again | don’t know about the legality of this. At the time of a sale, often
times open houses are done. Would we legally be able to go in at that time and do an unofficial assessment of
the property.
Attorney Bolton
| Know of no prohibition that would, no law that would prohibit any of our building inspectors from taking
photographs. Certainly if there is an open house, | guess it means it is an open house so anyone can go as
presently constituted our assessors work a Monday through Friday schedule. Most of the open houses take
place on weekends, maybe some in the evenings, but obviously they work regular daytime schedules. Now
over time other things can happen, schedules can be changed, better way to do things can be worked out. It
might not be impossible to have an assessor accompany the Building Inspector for that final inspection and
make it more convenient for the homeowner to have to make that arrangement only once rather than twice. So
all of those things are certainly possible.
Alderman Klee
| guess my last part of that is, | know when my house was on the market, one of the things that a lot of real
estate agents like to do are these videos that literally show, granted they use the wide lens and my oven looked
like it would fit a body in it. You know but just to give you an idea as to how many bedrooms, the process, we
can use all those tools when we are not allowed into a home is what | am kind of thinking.
Attorney Bolton
If you’ve got a home that is being marketed for sale or one that has recently sold, much information can be
gathered. The Assessing Department subscribes to the multiple listing service so they are able to, when a
home has been listed on the service, they are able to access the pictures that have been posted and if there are
links to videos or other things on there. Very often there are flowery descriptions that paint the home in the best
possible light. They can get information there and by a simple calculation when the Deed comes through you
can calculate from the tax stamps what the sale price is. There are other documents that are filed with the DRA
that we can get access too to learn the sales price. That can give you an idea as to whether your data is correct
or not, you are not supposed to and there are reasons because of the way it affects the calculation of the
