Executive Summary
This is a final report on a Management Audit of the Assessing Department within the City of
Nashua. This study was commissioned by Mayor Jim Donchess and was conducted from
November 2018 through February 2019 by Chief Financial Officer John Griffin and Chief of
Staff Kim Kleiner.
Specificatly, Mayor Donchess directed the:
° Review of written and unwritten policies and procedures which are in effect in the
Assessing Department and recommend any new or different policies and/or procedures which
should be adopted and/or put into operation.
° Review and evaluation of the policies, practices and procedures related to the
management of the Assessing Department and recommend improvements and changes.
° Review of the organizational structure and the staffing of the Assessing Department and
make any reorganization or restructuring recommendations which would benefit the
operations of the Assessing Department in particular and the City of Nashua as a whole.
Note: This audit was not intended to review the practices or procedures used by KRT
Appraisal, an independent contractor, who was responsible for performing the city’s most
recent Revaluation project. KRT Appraisal followed specific New Hampshire Department of
Revenue Administration, Municipal and Property Division rules and procedures to conduct the
Revaluation. Due to concerns regarding the efficiency and capacity of the internal assessing
department in early spring of 2018, the decision was made to recommend the hiring of an
experienced appraisal consultant to the Board of Aldermen.
The major findings of the management audit are:
1} Ineffective management of the Assessing Department
2) Lack of internal policies to guide operations
3) Disparate software systems utilized by the department are not optimized
4) A full measure and list of all properties within the City has not been conducted since the
early 1990s
