At the end of March my letter to the editor questioned whether the Nashua Assessors Department would focus on the doing the work of processing the large number of Abatements -or- would they simply use their option to effortlessly automatically deny the application by doing nothing before July 1.

We are more than halfway through the allotted time for processing and here is the status which was taken directly from a presentation given to the Board of Alderman on 5/2/2019. Pending Abatements = 299. Approved Abatements = 60. Denied Abatements = 20. Subcontracted Pending Abatements = 6. TOTAL = 385.

This data shows that the Assessors Department has acted on 80 Abatement Applications since January and that 75% of these have been approved. At this pace 120 Applications will be acted on by July 1, leaving 265 applications to fall into the automatic denial category. If we estimate the approval ratio of the already processed applications will be roughly applicable to the Pending applications, this results in about 200 Abatements that would likely be approved, but will rather be automatically denied.

Not acting on a residents’ abatement application is unprofessional and disrespectful. The Board of Assessors with the support of the Board of Alderman and the support of the Mayor should change the policy to automatically APPROVE all Abatements that are not processed by July 1. It would be a fitting reversal of a disrespectful process that incentivizes inaction and screws over the residents. But more to the point, if the Assessing staff picks up the pace … we won’t need to burden the Board of Assessors, the Board of Alderman or the Mayor with figuring out a new policy.

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