3 September, 2014
The Board of Assessors met on Tuesday, September 2nd, to discuss the current state of the financial department and assessors in the town.
After approving minutes and bills payable, the board moved to talks about current and future staff for the finance department. First, the board discussed current workloads for employees. The board asked Deputy Assessor Patty Howell for an estimate of how her time was split up, concerned that too much of her day was taken up by non-finance activities. Howell assured the board that, at most, 2% of her day was spent doing activities outside her typical job. She noted that other employees were more divided, spending about 50% of their time on non-assessor activities.
The board raised concern, however, at the prospect of giving too many employees access to too many records. As board member Mr. Palmer expressed, he was not concerned with the current employees, but at the possibility that one "crooked" person could exploit the assessor's records with access to too much information.
The board then moved to their search for a principal assessor. Mr. Palmer said that interviews had taken place on Friday, and that they were satisfied with the candidates and would make a decision shortly.
Following this discussion, the board went into executive session.
The Board of Assessors meets next on Tuesday, September 16th.
