Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 17
equalization ratio, you are not supposed to be blindly just raise the assessment to match the sales price. That is
true even if you’ve been equalizing it. It can be an indication that wnat you had down in your data as a place
with 1 1 /2 baths turns out to have 3 baths. What you thought was a 3 bedroom home turns out to be a 4
bedroom home. That sort of correction to the data on a piece of property is definitely possible when a house is
listed for sale.
Alderman Klee
The reason | am bringing this up is perhaps that would be a good position to have rather than having an
assessor have to do it but having someone that was more or less kind of their full time job. And | don’t mean to
add cost or that but | think it would be a valuable tool for people to be able to use. And | understand that we
can’t do, because someone could sell a $700,000.00 for $250,000.00 because they are selling it to a family
member. So | understand it goes both directions, so we don’t follow the price in that respect but | was just
thinking more of the descriptive nature of it.
Attorney Bolton
They go through a check on that as well. It is what they call qualifying a sale. One method of valuing property
is to compare it to other properties and make adjustments to the properties you are comparing it to, to try and
arrive at a value that is based upon what the market is doing. Well if you have suspicions that a sale is not truly
based upon the market because it is what they call, not being at arm’s length that would mean as you pointed
out, someone selling to a relative for a lower price. Or seller financing sometimes increases the price so if there
is seller financing involved you would probably disqualify that as being a comparable. So these kind of other
things you mention enter into the picture too. So for every property that is sold, an assessment, a judgement is
made as to whether it is a bona fide arm’s length transaction and therefore a qualified sale.
Alderman Klee
Thank you very much.
Alderman Tencza
Thank you for including the descriptions of the assessing department what each employee does in the
assessing department. | was kind of taken back at how much each person is responsible for. Did you make any
opinions throughout this audit on whether the assessing department is adequately staffed, especially on the
assessing side or even on the administrative side?
Ms. Kleiner
Well we did. So first one of the things that was noted is those job descriptions and we gave you the job
descriptions that are currently held by HR for those positions. We did realize that those need to be reviewed
and restructured and rewritten to provide more oversight on what the positions are actually doing now. So it
lists an appraiser in there, we have assessors. But during the interviews it was the opinion of several staff that
we needed what they call full measure and lister which is not an assessor, but that is the person that goes out
and reviews and looks around and does measurements on houses. That is something that we’ve had in the
past that we do not have now. | think as we look for an improvement plan, we will certainly have to look at the
staffing levels and are they adequate? But more further investigation would be needed on that.
Alderman Tencza
| just would like to make a couple of follow up comments, not really a question but first, just to say we've lost a
number of these positions for reasons over the years and even not doing the full measure and list, you know,
every time we do a full measure and list we take away positions from other parts of City Government and $1
