The Mayor keeps shooting the Messenger
Why is it so difficult for the Mayor to be accountable to the assessing office problems? His actions or inactions represent a startling pattern of behavior. On many occasions the Mayor has been very comfortable blaming me for the Assessing office debacle while skirting his responsibilities to own the problem. What does he do and say?
1. He blames the State for not allowing the City to violate statutory and constitutional duties. In February 2018, The Mayor asked the State to extend the deadline to update the property assessments. The statues mandate that updates must be done every 5 years. Soured by the unsurprising State decision, he announced in a public meeting that the State said they would sue the city next week if the City told them they were not going to do the update in 2018.
2. My first encounter with the Mayor was at his monthly coffee in downtown Nashua. When I explained my concerns with the new assessments, the Mayor became bristled and let attendees know that the taxes on my property went down, and I should be happy. I clarified for the Mayor that the assessment is what determines equity not the tax bill. I went back to the next month coffee with the Mayor and that resulted in a more heated discussion. He raised his voice in anger and slammed me for wasting the time of City officials and spending hours with the Chief Financial officer. I had never met the Chief financial Officer. If the Mayor only knew the time I was about to invest in understand the Assessing Office.
3. The negative experience at the coffee sparked me to speak at a September 2018 Board of Aldermen meeting and raise questions about the equity of Nashua’s assessments. The Mayor stated that as an elected official, he couldn’t get involved with anyone’s property assessment as it would appear improper. Yet, he was very interested in discussing my property. He wanted the public to trust the Assessors and leave it to the experts imploring the public not to get into the details. Three state agencies have all enacted orders, rulings or sanctions against Nashua Assessors and the work of the office, so it would appear my concerns were real.
4. I began attending more Aldermen meetings to speak about my concerns. The Mayor highlighted at a November 2018 meeting that my taxes went down and he doesn’t much care about the folks on Berkeley St. Is that his way of towing the line by discussing my tax bill and not the property assessment?
5. In the same November 2018 Board of Aldermen meeting, the Mayor was miffed that I would dare question how a high value permit on his property record card was captured and assessed. The Mayor stated “so the idea that somehow this was improper is completely a slander.” The point hear was that the Mayor was the recipient of a wildly underassessed permit that left him with a sweetheart deal, and my property had a wildly over assessed sales correction, that left us with the shaft. The thinned-skinned Mayor cries out slander not able to recognize that the public has the right to question what may appear wrong or improper.
6. In March 2019, he attends an Assessing office staff meeting and again brings up my property assessment and tax bill. He wants all the assessors to know that I shouldn’t be complaining. As the top leader of the City, could this have influenced the Assessor from fixing a mistake or correcting the property assessment?
7. After a daylong hearing up at the Board of Tax and Land appeal, the Mayor speaks at the next public Aldermen meetings, August 2019, and again concludes that he doesn’t believe that there are errors and they are not wide spread. He says, there has been a campaign…, claiming without basis, but claiming that the Nashua records are full of inaccuracies and there are all kinds of inequities and problems. He refuses to acknowledge the problems.
8. In August 2019, after the BTLA hearing, I questioned the contract compliance for the update so I submitted a Right-To-Know for the returned data. The Mayor and Ms. Kleiner ran to the newspaper. In an article in the Telegraph, ”City …Overwhelmed by Requests” , The Mayor states, “To us, it seems like the intention is to disable, to retaliate, to punish the city — not to help anything. What is this helping exactly?” But the City never called me or my lawyer in an attempt to narrow the scope and ease the apparent burden. Instead, the City practices malicious compliance, exaggerating the requests specifically to damage my reputation. The City is the one retaliating, disabling and punishing me.
9. In June 2020, the State acts on my formal complaint filed against Nashua Assessors and issues sanctions. The only supervisor in the Nashua office is stripped of his title for one year and required to take 4 classes. Without a Certified Supervisor, the office is not compliant with the state rules. Now, the Mayor has to hire a consultant to serve as the certified supervisor. Rex Norman is a very qualified gentlemen from Windham who justifiably warrants a top dollar salary as a result of the complete mess in Nashua.
10. How does the Mayor respond to this in the July 15, 2020 Finance Committee meeting? Poorly. Once again, he shoots the messenger. He makes many statements at this meeting.
The Mayors is upset that all the New Hampshire Assessors are aware of what is going on in Nashua. If he wanted the problem to stay within city limits, he needed to stop blaming others.
He says, “multiple complaints have been filed by a resident or two against all of the Assessors, multiple complaints, criminal complaints, ethics complaints, to be straight forward, that’s why we can’t find a Chief Assessor, a very big factor.” But, it was the Chairman of the Board of Assessors who told me to file with the state.
The Mayor then trivializes the state sanctions and calls the one year demotion “minor”. This minor sanction cost the City $125,000 to hire a part time consultant. Should he be angry with the citizen or himself?
The Mayor concludes his remarks by saying, “Have all of these complaints filed against the Assessors cost the hardworking taxpayers of Nashua a lot of money? Yes they have.” Citizens have no business trying to improve their government.
In the final kicker, the Mayor received a private Facebook message from an experienced clerical staff member of Assessing on July 12, 2016, telling him that things in the office were not good. Chief Duhamel had been working there six months and she writes "Hi again...I just wanted to let you know of my concern that the City's new chief assessor frequently arrives late (noon or so) and leaves early (2 or 3). I realize he owes me no explanation but you asked a while back how I thought he was doing so I figured you would appreciate an update. He hasn't come in yet today. He doesn't seem to care about things too much. It just seems strange but since I haven't seen John Griffin down here since last year sometime, I wanted to be sure to mention it to you, confidentially of course." The Mayor never responds and left this chief as a non-productive worker for three more years. Who really wasted taxpayer money?
The Mayor is completely focused on blaming a citizen. It’s a pattern of behavior and a reflection about how the Mayor really feels about public engagement. This many public denouncements of me defines the rule rather than the exception. With Mayor Donchess as leader, it’s doubtful that Nashua’s Assessing problems will be corrected anytime soon.