Title
Body
MEMORANDUM
TO: Honorable Board of Supervisors
FROM: Richard Ford, Assessor-Recorder
Barbara Ringen, Treasurer-Tax Collector
DATE: March 7, 2017
SUBJECT: Request to Temporarily Modify Front Office Hours of Operation
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
The challenges facing the Assessor's and Treasure-Tax Collector's offices continue and will continue for the foreseeable future. We have had a difficult time recruiting and retaining employees. The Assessor's Office has recently received notice of a resignation of an appraiser and has been notified that we will lose another appraiser this summer. The Treasurer - Tax Collector's Office has the possibility of two retirements within the next year.
With constant turnover, the offices have come close to maxing out the production that can be achieved with the current staff. In order to remedy this issue in the short term, we are formally requesting the ability to change the hours of the Public Assessor/Recorder's and Treasurer - Tax Collector's Offices to Monday through Friday 9 AM to 12 PM and 1PM to 4PM of every week for the foreseeable future. This will help us attempt to get ahead of the learning curve as new employees are hired and deal with the current workload demands of the office. We will tell you personally that we do not like requesting reduced time to answer the citizen's concerns and questions regarding their property tax values and collection but we feel that there are not many other choices. The hope is to be able to reverse this request as soon as possible but we cannot at this time provide a timeline of the outlook on when this request might be reversed.
As background for the Assessor's office, the challenges facing the office have not changed, even with the progress the office has made in the last two plus years. The long term challenge will be to increase the experience of the staff to complete the requirements of the office. The ratio of overall parcels to staff, statewide is approximat...
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