Thomas MacMillan Photo
As the tax appeal board picks up the pieces from a scandal-infused implosion, the mayor has tapped an old hand to take charge.
Jeffrey Granoff (pictured), who was a member of the Board of Assessment Appeals for eight years before, has been appointed to help lead the body, which is charged with assisting taxpayers who feel they’ve been overbilled by the city. The realtor and retired Sound School teacher works out of a downtown office on Olive Street.
The mayor has also appointed two other members, Kenneth Janke and Christopher Mordecai, filling the three-seat board. Mordecai is a part-owner of Cafe Romeo on Orange Street.
Those appointments were announced in a release on Thursday afternoon. City spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga also touted reforms at the tax assessor’s office, including the installation of audio recorders, improved record keeping, and a hotline for “customer concerns” with a “guaranteed timely human response.”
Those measures come in response to recent taxpayer uproar directed at both the tax assessor’s office and the Board of Assessment Appeals. About the former, citizens have complained of rude treatment and arbitrary increases in their property assessments. The tax appeals board, meanwhile, has been accused of failing to keep minutes or hold public meetings and otherwise failing to meet its legal duties.
The Board of Aldermen’s Tax Abatement Committee has been holding a series of heated public hearings on these complaints, during which allegations of nepotism and conflict of interest have come to light.
Granoff spoke with committee members at the Tax Abatement Committee meeting on Tuesday, Sept 14. He explained how the Tax Appeals Board had worked during the eight years he had been a member and one year he had been chair. Aldermen asked him to return to head the committee, but he declined, saying he now spends a large part of the year in Puerto Rico.
Since that meeting, Granoff appears to have changed his mind about returning to the appeals board.
In Thursday’s release, Mayorga wrote that Granoff has “an interest in leading transparent reform that will yield better service, greater communication between the board and taxpayers and accountability in the interest of all City residents.”
Mayorga also wrote that the comptroller’s office and the office of corporation counsel will ensure that the appeals board’s new members will receive the training and resources they need to “appropriately perform their duties.”
The release includes a bullet point list of reforms in both the tax assessor’s office and the Board of Assessment Appeals:
“• Maintaining logs of customer concerns/complaints
• Providing feedback cards to measure customer satisfaction in both offices – this will help to improve service and to recognize those employees in these offices who are providing exemplary service
• Hotline established for customer concerns- guaranteed timely human response
• All calls to these offices are being recorded for quality assurance
• Cross training between assessor’s and tax collector’s staff
• Customer service training of employees in both offices”
The Board of Assessment Appeals will hold its next meeting on Sept. 30 at 5 p.m.
Jeff,
Glad you changed your mind. You're a wonderful resource about the history of New Haven Real Estate.
Alderwoman Maureen O'Sullivan-Best