Telegraph photo by MATHEW PLAMONDON Nashua acting Administrative Services Director Kim Kleiner and two Assessing Department employees, Louise Brown, left, and Greg Turgiss, on Tuesday present their progress since the March 1 release of the Management Audit of the Assessing Department.

NASHUA – Acting Administrative Services Director Kim Kleiner was joined by Administrative Lead Louise Brown and Commercial Assessor Greg Turgiss in providing members of the Board of Aldermen with an assessing update Tuesday night.

During the meeting, officials discussed the eight major recommendations made by the Management Audit Report, released March 1.

1. Re-establish the Administrative Services Director position. This has already taken place, with Kleiner now in the acting role. She is expected to soon take the full-time position at a salary of $105,000 per year.

2. Eliminate the position of Chief Assessor. This also has already taken place, while the person who last filled the position, Jon Duhamel, no longer works for the city.

The remaining recommendations are in various phases of action.

3. More effectively use the AssessPro software to conduct assessing business. Additionally, consultation and technical assistance by Patriot Properties may be needed. Kleiner said this will be easier for officials to handle. In August, the plan is to work with IT/Patriot to migrate remaining processing applications from Admins system to the current version of AssessPro. A year later, in August 2020, the plan is to work with IT/Patriot to implement the new version of AssessPro, which will allow for multi-tax-year databases to be viewed and updated.

“The initial cost to probably upgrade the software is somewhere around $35,000, and annually it will cost us about $17,700 in annual fees and maintenance,” Kleiner said.

4. Create and/or update internal policies and procedures to reflect the current state of operations, and review functions within the department and update job descriptions as appropriate.

“We thought it was important to go through all of assessing’s and bring them up to date,” Kleiner said. “They have all been completed and forwarded to the Human Resources and the union for review.”

5. Implement a new mileage reimbursement policy and related procedures for all employees who use their personal vehicle for city business.

6. Develop integrated internal training programs for assessing and administrative staff, as well as to conduct orientation and informational workshops with the Board of Assessors.

“We are currently looking at how to provide the general public with an assessing 101, and we have spoken with KRT (Appraisal) and we would join with KRT and some of our internal staff to have a public meeting, hopefully more toward the end of May, where people can come in and ask questions, and we can give an overall on property cards, what the information means – things of that sort,” Kleiner said.

Additionally, she said officials are looking to have an orientation for the Board of Assessors. There has been a new member appointed to the board. Kleiner said after that person hopefully is seated on the board, they would like to have a review of the report prepared by KRT.

7. Reduce the reliance on the city’s legacy ADM INS software applications.

In August, officials plan to work with IT/Patriot to migrate remaining processing applications from Admins system to the current version of AssessPro. Kleiner said it is important to note that from January to April officials took and processed credits and exemption applications. From mid-November, they will take and process abatements.

“So, it really fits if we look at this August timeline,” Kleiner said. “It’s when you start to see a little bit of a lull in the workload, which will provide our staff with enough time to really look at the move-over from one software to another and analyze the data.”

8. Invest in a full measure and list project to update the property record data, which will be completed in time to perform the next state mandated revaluation.

Kleiner said in July, those in her office are planning to meet with officials in Finance, Assessing and the Mayor’s Office. They are looking to begin a bid process to submit bond resolution to the Board of Aldermen, which is estimated to cost $1.3 million in a time period of three years.

Two months have passed since the audit was presented, while 15 working days with Kleiner acting as administrative services director. In that time, officials have received 43 emails, conducted a pair of two-hour meetings with residents, seven full staff meetings, eight individual meetings and four Board of Assessor meetings. She said they also continue to have multiple request for a large amount of data, property files and documents.

Kleiner has also established an online form being introduced that she directs residents to use to request documents. It is also now available with online submittal. She said it makes it difficult for the staff to be working on some the statutory requirements of abatements and all the elderly exemptions and that the residents of Nashua deserve to be processed. So, if there is a large amount of data one is looking to acquire, they ask they write down the addresses on that form. She said the department will then get back as soon as the information requested is ready, and will definitely get back within five business days.

“I’m not restricting any information to the public, but we have had a large number of requests, more than the staff has ever seen in 20 years of the Assessing Department,” Kleiner said.

Newsletter