But the photo spread in the Herald News should be SPECTACULAR!

Fall River's backlog of abatement
checks draws criticism
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By Michael Holtzman
Herald News Staff Reporter
Posted Jul 29, 2010 @ 09:21 PM
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FALL RIVER — Ruth Steger, one of 260 property owners the Board of Assessor’s awarded abatements this year, said she’s waited three months to receive her $310.07 refund check.


While officials said Thursday an “emergency check” would be processed early next week through the tax collector’s office, Steger said she’s received “a complete runaround” amid conflicting reports about the process and the problem.


“I understand that the department is understaffed, but this is now double the time that I was told when I called in May,” Steger, of 3865 N. Main St., wrote in an e-mail.


“When I called the mayor’s office on Monday, I was told that it was the first time that they had heard that there was a problem, which I find hard to believe,” she said.


Steger said when she read an account Thursday about the number of abatements awarded, “I thought I couldn’t be the only one that hadn’t gotten their money back.”


Nelia Oliveira, the tax collection head clerk, said she’s processed “a good 40” abatements approved by the assessors this year.


That fraction of the total approved is not extraordinary, Oliveira said, because of the process to ensure taxes have been paid and posted to each account and funds are owed to a particular owner at a given address.


To ensure this process, she said any property owner receiving an abatement needs to file a refund request form with the collector’s office. That would happen after the Board of Assessors notifies the owner of their abatement award, Oliveira said.


In some cases, owners seek credits on current or future bills she said. “All my tax refunds are done up to date.”


Steger, who’s owned her duplex for six years just south of Shaw’s supermarket, said she’s had “three or four” conversations with the collector’s office and left a message last week that was not returned.

Calling first in early May, she said the collector’s office had verified her information and said she was due the $310 abatement. Steger said this was the first time she was told about the collector’s refund form.


She filed two sets of different forms to seek abatement. When the assessor’s sent the award, there was no mention of filing a refund form with the tax collector, she said. This was also her second time receiving an abatement since 2008 because of retainer wall damage at the complex.


“How am I supposed to know that you need to do that?” Steger asked. She also questioned why she never received that information in prior phone calls.


Apparently, the two departments involved with this process are not on the same page.


“There is no refund form needed because the bill and the refund are going to the exact same place,” said Lorrie Gagne, head clerk in the assessor’s office, who processes the abatements.


“It’s not just one call. We get a lot of calls about refund checks and where are they,” Gagne said. They refer callers to the tax collector’s office.


Gagne said she referred this problem Thursday to the office of Treasurer David Grab, who oversees both departments as financial services director.


The assessor’s and collector’s offices have been without a department head for over a month since Mayor Will Flanagan fired both officials.


A new assessor will take the office Monday and a tax collector should be hired by mid-August, Flanagan said.


Grab was in a meeting late Thursday and not available for comment. Government Center has been closed Fridays for more than a year because of budget cuts and reduced work days.

That’s why the earliest Oliveira said a special refund could be processed was early next week.


She said that three or four weeks ago Grab reinstituted the policy that the assessor’s office issues the refund forms. She said some policies had been changed during two years under the prior department head.


Initially, Steger said she was told in early May it would be five or six weeks to receive payment. Two weeks ago the collector’s office said they could not process checks because accounting was being closed for the end of the fiscal year, she said.


When Oliveira called her back Thursday and she learned the collector’s office required a refund abatement form, she was incredulous.

Steger said when she talked with Oliveira about her abatement “she was going to mail me some paperwork to fill out.” Later in the conversation, “she made a call and said they’re going to cut me a check Monday or Tuesday,” Steger said.

Oliveira confirmed that account, saying she took that step “because of the situation.”
E-mail Michael Holtzman at mholtzman@heraldnews.com.

 

YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS MESS !!!!

 

 

Yes it appears  the "MEAN GIRLS" administration's monumentally incompetent and completely politically motivated decisions to gut the City of Fall River's financial team's department heads virtually at the same time has left financial departments rudderless  like a bloody, dying flounder hooked through the gills, flopping about on the City's equally fallow waterfront . No way to get a breath, no way to find their way back to the deep sea of safety called ability. Yes Mayor Flanagan, YOU and no one else but YOU are to blame for this mess.

This is what comes of flitting around the City with the Herald News reporter and photographer in tow to every conceivable photo-op you can possibly find, instead of rolling up your sleeves and personally solving the long entrenched problems within this City's financial and administrative management. You have shown NO inclination or desire to do so.

 Admit it Tumbleweed, you do not know how, you haven't the background or the skill set necessary to do so. Yet another young and arrogant lawyer who thinks themselves smarter than everyone else with the ability to solve every problem. It's not true Bag-Boy, not true at all. And your answer to these issues which have become measurably WORSE in the seven (7) months you've been in office is non-existent. You are betting (no pun intended) that the Destination Casino will hurl you into a invulnerable position with City voters. You might be able to fool the meme's and vuvu's of Fall River, but you cannot fool educated and employed citizens any longer. They expect results. But what they get are these hideous stories of institutional failure concerning things that are done so easily in municipalities surrounding this City and in places where they have lived before. Admit it Mayor Flanagan, you don't know what you are doing! And neither does Ratso Rizzo Torres.

Could it be you mis-timed the firings of your finance department heads? Could it be that you should have offered a salary to the City Accountant to keep  him in office at least until the books were closed for FY2010, and allowing him to take the School position after that? I mean, you ARE Chairman of the School Committee, you could have made that happen! Maybe you should have spent the funds to hire a real Finance Director, one with experience, rather than a man who has never served as either Treasurer or Finance Director prior to being here? And please, do not try to convince Fall Riverites that qualified people with unblemished track records want to come to work in Fall River , with all of it's known monumental problems, AND take cuts in pay to do so, just to have a chance to work with you and your miniature assassin, Torres. That dog won't hunt, Mr. Mayor, and only life long, uneducated fools within this City's boundaries believe it. Only broken people come to work in broken down places when the pay is lower than what a good executive secretary makes in the private sector. Most people in Fall River have NO CLUE what qualified professionals make, and it's not the low wages offered across the board in Fall River. Like one commenter on the HN is fond of saying, "you pay peanuts and you get monkeys!".

If the City utilized the software package it owns to it's fullest extent your finance department employees would not be lost in this needless labyrinth of manual record keeping between departments completely dependent upon paper flow,  in place of computer generated postings and check cutting. How positively Byzantine! The City can no longer afford to run itself like it's a mom and pop corner store. Fall River is a quarter billion dollar business being run with ten cent logic. It's therefor bound to have these ridiculous and anachronistic problems. Oh, that's right, you just fired the IT Manager because he refused to bow down and be a Flanagan bum kisser. Not everyone in Fall River can play that role as well as the Herald News.

This City will not get a Tax Rate for FY2011 very easily. And when that time comes

I wouldn't want to be Mr. Grab. You and I both know Mayor Flanagan will not step up and take full repsonsibility for the condition in which he's left the City's finances. There are no Profiles in Courage in the finance department, as we saw  months ago, and now that includes the entirety of the MEAN GIRLS administration.

But the photo spread in the Herald News should be SPECTACULAR!