Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 21
So | know Mr. Bolton highlighted the experience of our Board of Assessors, | have some serious reservations
about what is going on in there. | really do. | am so glad you brought up the Charter, the Board of Assessors
does not seem to know where they fit in that Charter. One of their Mission Responsibilities in the web site it to
review all policy and make certain all policy is implemented. When | saw them 3 months ago, | came with their
Mission Statement and | read to them — your job is to implement policy, review policy, make certain it is
happening. And at that point they looked at the Chief and said — Do we have any policies? And he kind of
shrugged and went — | don’t know we are looking into that. And then we started talking about the need for a
policy on how to judge and grade fixtures. That was in November.
| have been very patient, | have sat back very quietly for 4 months and said nothing about this because | have
been watching, where is that policy. And that’s a pretty simple policy to outline just to establish some standards
among all the assessors. So November goes by and here we are March and | know our Chief left, but through
this entire timeframe, no policy ever came forward, no first read to the Board of Assessors, no second read to
the Board of Assessors, no asking by the Board of Assessors — Hey where is the policy on this? They don’t
seem to even understand that they need to be calling out for that. So | have some serious reservations and
when | go to those meetings | usually come out of it with a pretty good headache. And there is a lot of work to
do because | don’t think they understand what their role is and the Chair, you know, he’s the one who pushed
me to the State to the Commissioner Lindsey Stepp.
When | called the Commissioner and got her on the phone, she was like — Well wait a minute, you know, you
have a problem with the Chief coming to work, that really doesn’t fall on my plate, that’s on your plate, you pay
the guy. You know there is some stuff you are supposed to be doing. My Board of Assessor is like no, no, no,
that is not on us. We are not covering that, go up to the State. So right now even between the State and the
Board of Assessors, | am not certain what our role is. But | can tell you that our Board doesn’t feel like they are
tied to this position at all and | think they are missing something here.
With regard to the position and the elimination of the Chief, | have a major concern. Mayor Donchess you
mentioned that we have somebody within now in a supervisory capacity, | was more or less assured by you
today Kim that we were not promoting anyone from within, nothing was being established that way. | hope that
is true because | have serious reservations given the report about taking staff within and promoting anyone
because there is a total lack of training. One of your commercial assessors has only been doing commercial for
2 years; one of your residential has only being doing residential for 2 years. For those people you’ve had a
massive lack of oversight for the 3 % years that the Chief has been there, so they are not well-trained in my
book at all with oversight and work. And then you’ve got the whole communication problem internally and then
you’ve got massive standards issues among the assessors that have experience in general.
So | get pretty distraught to think that we have somebody capable within of promoting. | also share the same
concerns Mr. O’Connor expressed. You know we haven't had the time, the CFO, even you Kim, have pretty
busy jobs, all-encompassing jobs to now be down in that Assessing Office defining the direction and what needs
to be done concerns me. | feel we need an Assessing Expert. Not for nothing but they are not assessing
experts. And the fact that we are eliminating the Chief, Angelo Marino was a Chief, was a GIS Director and |
think at one point a part-time IT guy and he sat in the Assessing Office and he wore all three hats. And when
the IT piece kind of disappeared he wore two hats. So | don’t know where this person is going to sit but | think
and Angelo was here from 1996 until he left in 2016 and then you brought in John so you had the better of 23
years, you’ve had a Chief. It’s a recognized position in the State.
So the concept that Donnalee got rid of the Director position, we still had a Chief, we’ve had a Chief for a long
time. So | really question, and the City has grown and the parcels of land have grown and the number of
properties have grown. Can we really run without one, do we really not need one? So | hope you think a little
bit about that because that is a reservation | have and | think you need to bring in help now to figure out how
you are going to define how that group operates in a true assessing form.
