 to order and the first item of business is approving the minutes of the last meeting June 11th 2020 I notice I noticed as I looked at the minutes that there the typographical error that was in the agenda of the last meeting is was carried over to the minutes and that is the second line down under approved motor vehicle abatement reports I think there's been a number that was supposed to um I don't know what the correct entry there is but it's not right right right it's not correct right now okay so approve um so the minutes the minutes need a correction yes okay and and you're not sure what the correct amount is well I um I looked at it I remember looking at it during the meeting and noting at the time that there needed to be a decimal point there oh okay I've actually the the correct entry should be $12,995 and 58 cents instead of a decimal point there's a three there and in the uh minutes okay um would you consider approving this with it with the correction to be made yes uh well I'm looking at the other entries just um I think I can bring up that and correct it on the fly if you like yeah um I think it would be other than that I have no other um corrections to make so that's that's fine yeah I'll move I'll move for approval with the correction second all those in favor all right hi I can morning and I was at the last meeting so I won't so glad to see you Ken yeah Liz when can we see you well um yeah you're uh I just realized my camera is down hello there you are okay I am live and in color um I did get to most of these appeals personally um I didn't get into all the homes but I did actually get to view most of them I didn't get to some empty lots about okay so um I guess we have to go into executive session to address these um yes and no I mean I think that you know well if um if we're going over the physical documents and what was presented those are really okay we've got a we've got an extra participant right now okay um um the only one that's here is Angela Mills who is there's a sixth person I don't know it made me a member of the public okay let me make sure they're getting in uh attendees oh I'm sorry um so they're oh it's David Burgess well that would be good yeah we'll allow him to talk you think and I'm gonna put him on our panelists is she uh talking to a panelists so I've promoted him to panelists is he talking to us from his mountain layer uh well I don't know about mountain have you been to this house turn on David oh thank you can you hear me yeah we can't see you but we can hear you are you looking let me see well I was gonna say gentlemen before we um before we go into executive session to consider these abatements um did you want to um you know formally say you know there's no participants from the public at this point and um we're going well why don't we um maybe we should go to the discussion on staffing and so that when we go to executive session when we go to executive session we don't uh we don't have to come back to public that's fine okay that's fine so there's some discussion that you want to have about staffing budgeting reappointment for board members I got reappointed the other night I watched it live you did oh it's so exciting oh yeah um so you were reappointed at the board of assess board of selectments meeting I at the uh let's get it right now town council meeting town council meeting I'm so sorry the town council has reappointed you um for and what is your what is your term expired I have I have not seen the official paperwork but I I watched it live so I'm I'm good until June 30th 2023 okay excellent and I think the other two gentlemen are are still in the middle of their term respective terms that's right um well I think the question was too and and this was proposed by Lauren Aldrich our local um liaison with the department of revenue with the Commonwealth she suggested that I reach out to you gentlemen and see if um you all are on board to resume another term for another couple years um hopefully I don't probably not well they're in the middle of the these two gentlemen are in the middle of their terms so I think they're stuck yeah well I volunteered we like it that way so that that works out for the best um I forget I think Lee's got another year and I think Ken has two years Lee I thought we just reappointed didn't we Lee no no I've got another year okay so when does your term expire next year so in June 30th of 2021 that's what I remember and I think Ken is and I think Ken is 2022 right I have no idea I don't remember and then I I think there's a sort of an informal two-term limit and so uh 2023 I'm gone don't go I just got you uh world will change by this uh well yeah I I hope it's a little bit easier to hand to manage for all of us yeah um so basically um you know what we do is we go onto gateway and we fill in this form that says you know what your terms are and if you've been reappointed in your case Richard that was something that needed to be revised and Lee we just did you know where I believe right so we are good to go and Ken we're going to be hanging on to you till play two so don't go anywhere um as far as staffing goes right now um we are down lorry and of course David has been offering his services on a part-time basis for a while now what they've asked me to do is instead of hiring somebody right of way is to take use of our our vendor services such as white bishop and bishop associates and you know use the vision services if we need them and so forth to fill in the void until we can get more more assistance and find out you know where we are as far as needs and assessment um we do have a cyclical program of inspection that we have to stay on board with with the state of Massachusetts it says that we need to you know view properties every 10 years I believe it is state is that correct 10 or five 10 okay 10 for physical inspections so every time we do a permit or every time we go out for an abatement hearing you know once I do a physical inspection of a property that can be you know also taken off the list of things to look at but we do have 4800 accounts to get to before the end of 2023 fiscal year so I get I'm sorry please say that again we have 4800 accounts yeah left to visit by 2023 okay so there's a lot of work for this office and I think many times and this has been questions that have been asked by me to me by the manager well don't you have less work because of COVID and the reduction in permits and I think it's going to be important for us to express to the administration HR that you know our role is more than just valuing properties that are under construction or being subdivided we have quite a few things that we take the appraise and consider as part of our positions every year every business has to fill in a form of list that has to be analyzed data entered into the appraisal program for personal property we have to look for new businesses and etc then every time someone just quick claims their property from themselves to their new husband or wife or if there's a divorce and they're taking people off or if they're realigning their property to merge it or separate it they get an approval from wetlands or from planning and zoning it may affect assessment and change all those factors need to be put into the mass appraisal system and considered the other thing is every permit that's processed whether it's for a deck of shed a pool a generator how many people have done that lately that you know for each of those those all have to be data entered into the system and they have to be considered as part of the real estate manpower right now it's really only myself and Teresa as full time I'm sorry who asked the question that assuming that somehow the assessor's office had less work because of COVID the manager oh really yeah Paul Bachman but you know in fairness many people do not know what the role of the assessor's office is they do feel that it's more of a role of appraisal of real estate only and there there's far more to it we praise the cars we praise the businesses we praise the real estate we keep track of your records of ownership and the impact of changes to your records such as planning zoning wetlands these are all things that make an impact on the value and the status of your property and you know the status of your record is more important today than it ever has been it's a record of keeping track of not only your assessment for tax purposes but banks are using it for you know the official record when they're looking at appraising your property will be financing if you're looking for a credit to show that you're credit worthy these are all things that are are impacting impacted by our records the insurance company uses it for the official record to use when calculating your insurance these are things that are important you know if something devastating happens to your property we have the record of what was there before the devastation no less what crosses my mind is um you might sometime ask paul if you'd like he'd like you to give a short presentation to the town council well that was one of the things that i've been looking at um i know the international association of assessing officers um the m a a o also have um you know video presentations of that that nature um and sometimes it's good to have a formal presentation as well as a talk with the town council or with the um the power that be so that they can get a fuller picture of what we do um because not only do we look at things that we appraise we also look at tax relief for the blind the disabled the seniors um you know those are those are uh you know excellent programs and i'm proud that we protect her you know participate in that process but it's time consuming we have to distribute applications we have to process applications we have to determine whether or not they're uh qualified or not they have to support those in that that qualification with documentation it's you know a constant process i have not seen theresa sit still for 10 seconds since i've gotten here uh she's been amazing she's just flying around like a cat on fire because every time somebody wants to do something they need a butters list Liz i i'd i'd i'd also add the the work and the uh um consider consideration that goes into the recommendation for the annual tax rate is something that's very visible um and very important to the state of the town and if i'm not mistaken some promises were made about about assessing that whole business um later on this year or next in the coming fiscal year if i'm not mistaken dave there were some sort of a pledge made well yeah there was a pledge made the town manager wanted to take a look at the uh residential exemption for the going forward yes for this coming year um i think he has already put that aside okay i don't answer that handling this year we have to check with him uh i mean that's just that's a normal amount of workers to be done on that in the short period of time right but i i do recall when the tax rate was uh when they once again voted not to have um two different tax rates yeah um there was some concern from certain council members that um they would want to they sort of wanted to revisit the issue with a little more data and there was kind of a there was a commitment made which probably can be pushed back uh to collect that data and i i got the sense that the assessor's office was the one that was going to be tasked with doing that am i wrong about my memory of my memory on that now we would definitely be the ones who would be tasked with getting it yes but um in no small way because of my situation with health and one thing that has changed considerably since then yeah and the manager's aware of it but there's nothing to stop us going i'm going giving a bit more detail of an estimates and explaining the whole process a lot more clearly than we did last year for the council sure there are clearly some council members who have this on their mind and i think it was this was not a live issue as i understand it when we had a select board in town meeting but now we have council members who i think have this on their mind about tax rates yeah they do the financials very well the tax rate but you know the select board did it but through the same thing with 15 years ago yeah and said that they ended up to do it okay so so let me ask can if i can ask this question the peak the peaks the the proper status quo staffing in the assessor's office is how many how many people i think it varies depending on the responsibility of each community but you're broaching 40 000 people in this community and having two full-time people to manage it just a little bit too much if you think about it um even our that's that that's two full time including you right that's including myself yeah myself and one person okay and prior to that prior before you came on in whatever golden age dave can recall how many um how many staffers did dave have when he was properly um well we had more than two full time and one on the assessor we had three okay yeah but you also did you also did the adjacent town too that was one thing that they said they had pointed out that um the assessor's office handled pillow um so i let david speak to that yeah we did we did handle it at that time again to be honest and um yeah this is a bit hard for me because i was the one that actually put forward the idea of the changing of the staff but my envisioned what i had envisioned was a full-time person shared between the assessors and the collectors because there are times in the year that the um um the person that is in position lori's position is not real but i mean the middle of the winter you're not doing building permits yeah uh but in the summer you are and so you you could have switch it around and you'd also have the person then help up on the counter more and relieve trees a bit more for some of the stuff she needs to do a third a second alternative was as lizard pointed out a halftime position and also the support from outside world uh in the form of mr bishop or vision or whoever to do the building permits you know and then the but again the building permits are now taking on a whole new life of their own because the majority of people are not going to let us into their house we're going to have to do something from the outside uh we need to i would think we should explore using questionnaires for the building permits to see what we can get from people and then following up with two or three percent of inspections if we can get them and then checking the i mean the exteriors are easy enough nobody should inject us and open measuring a new addition or whatever's on the house we can certainly do that easily and we have the plan for it as well so i'm going to make sure we don't have any attendees that i'm not let in okay do do other members have any i i'm curious dave in the past and dave sort of our institutional memory here um has the board of assessors ever had an advocacy role or any sort of role in terms of um discussing staffing with either town meeting or the select board more support role uh most of the support most of the discussion comes through the finance department and then the the the board has been around the quiet since uh when i started and whatever a hundred years ago yeah the board was a working board and they asked them and did some of the permits and things they left i think they froze there you are there you're you're froze for just a second we froze it i don't know we heard you know we heard the whole thought when you were talking about when you first came on the uh as assessor the board was a working board yeah and as much as they would go and do the permits and they would review some of the properties and go through them and at that time we had in the office three and a half people so it has changed over time but the event of the computer advent of the computer had made that change considerably you know we can do things quicker with the motor vehicle access of the process before we do the commitment and all the rest so therese's job in one way has become lesser but we have pushed more on her over the time and that she will do personal property now she does well about 80 percent of the personal property entry leaving the bigger and more difficult ones for her uh blizzard myself to do and so she's doing that and we we do a lot more than sometimes do we send out a lot of stuff that people don't do we send out the rest of the personal exemptions every year and the form of list every year along with a copy of the previous year's personal property so people can do it all you're required to do but let's put a notice up and say the time's due come on and get your form well I would think you almost have to have two and a half people just to give Theresa a break so somebody else could fill in when she's not there otherwise this is gotta answer that's where I found a lot of the problem is there's no one for relief I'm trying to get out into the field and do more field work for the for the community and if I go out um Theresa's here on her own yeah what happened to the sharing with the collector of a person um Theresa is sharing with the collector right now my only one person is actually sharing with oh I had the pressure would be Theresa Liz and another person that would share between you and and that's what I think is reasonable yeah yeah and that went away or that's um it just never evolved yet oh isn't Theresa retiring no not yet okay all right she's telling me my her road is getting shorter so so it sounds to make sure that we have someone trained in it sounds to me as though there's some value in having the board educate itself that's the three of us on on how the office works and how it gets and how the work gets done and also what work is perhaps um well that we're having trouble getting done is that is that a I take it that I don't my very best to try to um you know put together something formal I'll run it past you all before it goes anywhere else um and and so when um I'm trying to think when does the staffing issue when is the in the mechanism of determining staffing in the town hall what what are the decisions you're trying to do it as part of the budget process okay as part of the budget process that they're preparing and they're saying that this year um they're not expecting as much of an impact but the following year is when they expect a wave of impact um this year they're they're keep trying to keep the staff whole and I kind of get it because you know you don't want to get rid of staff that's present you know they're looking at ways of okay you've done without this person for a number of months so maybe you don't need them and I think that's part of this oh boy yeah so as I recall the all process and this is the other thing which you're coming in in a brand new government that is where the town council is essentially building the plane while they're flying the plane as I recall Dave um David when the finance committee in the fall in the all process would ask you to come in would ask the police to come in the firefighters I take at the assessor's office to come in and and present what their needs were for the coming year do I have that wrong um that's basically what happened that was actually supposed to happen but then COVID hit and they got nowhere with all those meetings uh meetings generally take this in February and March that was the beginning of the year for the fiscal for the fiscal budget starting in in July right is that right but that didn't happen this year is that right um it did I mean uh but it wasn't a public meeting or anything of that sort it was with the the manager and the interim finance director Sonia Albridge and the feeling I got was you know even from the time I got here they did not want to fill the position and if they did um they were sure that that was going to be a part-time position okay but the so the so the finance committee that's part of the town council with two additional um non-voting volunteers um that that whole business of of of the assessor's office coming in and making a presentation to the to the finance committee that didn't happen this year is that right that is correct okay and that happened last year David yet it's happened every year before this year every year yeah okay obviously it became for this when we had the slack word and it became sort of just a rope you just went down and said a little one left again but the finance committee's paying a lot more attention well yeah I guess the other thing crosses my mind was you have to make a list in your back of your mind what things you can just stop doing I mean like David said we send out the notices but if you don't get more staff then you can't send those out you have to comply with the state law but you're gonna have to cut off stuff that you're doing nice stuff well and that's kind of some of the stuff that um you know has been shifted over I mean I if I've got one person on board my office I really don't want to share her with other divisions so where does the staffing decision stand right now has has a decision right now um what they're doing is the people that were at central services um there's a gentleman named Stephen Casey um he's being trained on our systems to do some data entry he's doing some data entry on permits um but right now that's only on a part-time basis and uh we may also have I'm not sure her last name let me look it up here so that Stephen Casey is being I'm sorry to interrupt you Stephen Casey is being is being lent to you from another department from the collector's department okay thank you and then um Cindy Carrie is also a member of that department and she may also be trained uh on doing uh some data entry for us and things like that but it isn't appraisal work or anything like that it would be simply you know taking some relief off of off of Teresa maybe doing some car adjustments and things that they're familiar with so that's sort of an ad hoc arrangement is that right um right now it would be the interim for the following fiscal year okay so that's the proposal at this point and maybe using um some of our consultant services through a bishop to pick up some of the appraisal permits and things like that so we can try to meet our cyclical requirement so is there any value for the chair of the board of assessors which I think I still am until somebody throws me out um to have at least have some contact with the Andy Steinberg about this concern about assessor office staffing well I think right now I'm sorry why did you contact Andy Steinberg because he's the chair of the finance committee oh okay busy um yes I'm pretty sure he is yeah he's the current chair of the finance yeah I'd be awful careful about going around Paul yeah yeah I mean with this covid thing everything's up in the air so you're not going to get anything permanent now definitely not permanent staffing so as long as the feeling I got I'd wait until you get through this mess uh and like somebody implied you know this is going to be a year that we'll probably get through it's next year that's going to be the tough one when the revenues are going to have to get cut back in people so as long as you can get the hands even if they're temporary if you can get the hands right your work I'd sort of tread water right now I think part of it is you know it takes at least a minimum of six years to make somebody useful in the assessor's office as far as training um and it's a highly technical field it's not something that you can take someone on and just say here go at it you know it takes a while to get somebody actually productive so I think more than anything I just want to let the public and the administration know that the assessor's office is more than just processing new construction yeah so for now only role so for now Liz you you you I get that you're going to be satisfied with having a lot of the clerical work done uh to relieve Teresa who in the past was Teresa full-time in the past yes okay so she's going to be relieved so you're going to have two are they part-time are they designated or can you express them at any time at this point I've only had a couple hours with Steven and that was only to give him a video to learn how to do the camera system basically um but Teresa tells me he does he does know how to adjust vehicles I think if even uh uh Steven and um Cindy can you know adjust some of those vehicles for Teresa so that that's something she can be taken off and I can assign something more complex to her I think that would be a good idea so this is all understood as being temporary yes permanent right but it sounded like the board of finance and the um or I shouldn't say the board of finance the interim director of finance the uh manager wanted to make it a half-time position and not this fiscal year but the following fiscal year in this fiscal year I'd survive with you know the temporary and the the vendor services which I have no objection who pays for the vendor services pardon me who pays for the vendor services our budget the general budget okay we have some left over so I make sure you use that budget item up make sure you use that that's that's why you think you can use that outside consultant all right okay just so I'm just so I'm not operating under a misunderstanding I thought Teresa was full-time now she is full-time now okay all right yeah as a matter of fact she's flying like a she's just flying around trying to try to meet everybody's expectations and they even have her doing the postage for the entire town I couldn't believe it and Teresa has been Teresa has been working for you Dave how long oh first oh the whole time probably at least 16 17 years okay she's really proficient and she's very helpful and she's open to new things so I'm hoping that um you know hang on to her as long as I can really because let's it be good just just have a staff update each meeting we have and it doesn't have to be this long but to keep us informed okay I just want you to keep it on your radar and if someone should you know come in your sphere and maybe you could give them a little enlightenment as to the role of the assessor's office okay there were two other topics on this on this list here do you want to address those Liz okay um let's see the budget I guess I wanted to know if there's anything that your board needs that you can think of that needs to be you know brought over into the next year's budget that I haven't addressed no correct me if I'm wrong but we normally have not been involved in the budgeting correct does the board have their own separate budget no we don't know okay so your board expenses are also in the expenses of the assessor's office okay so that's good to know I view us as I mean um I I got on here and I simply drifted with the flow but um but basically I viewed our function as as over as sort of an oversight function so that's yeah that's some communities do it differently and I wanted to make sure that I hadn't neglected your needs well we're here to help you Liz anyway we can help you it sounds to me thank you sounds from what David's described that the the uh the function of this board has evolved over the years yes maybe maybe devolved is the correct that's a good way to go okay well I certainly appreciate the assistance that you give me and in your support and we really well it sounds like we need to learn more about we could stand to learn more about how the office operates so that we could maybe talk about it with um other boards yeah I think you know um your your your participation as our liaisons to the other boards and um other officials of the town might be valuable okay because folks in the community recognize you as um you know folks that they can reach out to and they're familiar with and trust your opinion so I think that's important yeah less you could maybe put together like a pilot presentation and run it by us um and really highlighting the things that Amherst maybe does differently than other towns I think that's a good idea so we could be more educated and then you could use it later for the council or something sure um I think sometimes folks will compare places um as busy as Amherst with a very transient population and 40 000 people with a more rural and less demanding community and um you know that that plays a very big difference you know as you know I came from Windsor-Locks and we had that little thing called the International Airport called Bradley and even though it was a small town and didn't have a large resident population it was considerably challenging um and you know each time you go to a different community it is a different challenge um sometimes um you know it's dominated by residential properties but very challenging residential properties um I don't really find the challenging residential properties um so much as um you know there's a lot to learn here and um because of your transient population Theresa gets a lot from car adjustments and things like that because these students move all over the place every time they move and they re-register a vehicle in another state she has to do a correction of vehicle taxes excise taxes so think about how many students are going to any one university and moving back to their home excuse me for a minute certainly okay so um um anything else you want to talk about before we go in executive session I don't believe I missed anything I'm not trying to cut you off I'm just trying to no um what I did do though is um I did submit our our calendar of um it's it's just a brief calendar I was going to share that with you gentlemen I'll send that to each of you thank you it gives us the months of the year and it tells us what reports or duties we have to do and this is just a summary this doesn't count any other auxiliary things that we do that would be great the other thing that I have is a five-year perspective of where we were and where we are I forgot you showed that to us um a while ago and I would I would like to have a copy of that too for my I'll send it to all so that you have that because that's something that I've submitted to the to the um what a finance okay the finance director okay so now we're into the uh executive session would you like to call that all right I'm I'm gonna um do we have anyone else on the on the no we don't okay um I'm leah stepped out I'm gonna um uh authorize the executive session to look at uh by the way that some are there some personal exemptions we're supposed to be looking at today too or just the real estate of statements um I think we went over the personal exemptions at our last meeting those were approved okay so I'm I'm I'm just real I'm I'm I'm ordering an executive session for to uh to look at uh the real estate abatements for this this coming fiscal year correct any any of this current year I'm sorry it's a current fiscal year well these are involving tax bills f y 20 21 right oh these are abatements for 2020 I'm sorry I apologize okay um all right so Lee we're going to go into executive session any objection no okay