Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Staffing Backlog topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Assessors say limited staff time left backlog that could take years to clear without changes
Summary
Staff told the Assembly the exemption review team has operated with roughly 0.5 FTE focused on exemptions, identified about 650 priority records and estimated at current pace it could take years (2032 projected) to finish without staffing and timeline changes.
Assessor staff described the resource constraints that created the current backlog: when the work began in 2023 there was no assigned full‑time reviewer, and the division assigned roughly half of one full‑time equivalent to begin a multi‑year cleanup.
At the current rate, presenters said, the remaining 570 medium‑ and high‑priority files will take many years to complete. One staff member summarized the limit bluntly: “we're only running 0.5 a person for during the year.”
To accelerate work, staff proposed reclassifying and upgrading two positions to dedicate substantially more time to audits and to migrate older paper records into the appraisal system so reviewers spend less time on file retrieval. The combination of those staffing changes and the proposed 90‑day certification timeline, they said, could reduce the projected completion year from 2032 to about 2030.
Assembly members questioned whether the cost of chasing small adjustments would exceed the fiscal benefit; staff replied that the work is at least partially a statutory obligation under state law and municipal code and that the effort primarily restores accurate records rather than raises new revenue.
The presentation left open budget details for the staffing changes; the Assembly did not take a vote during the work session.
