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City hires assessing and consulting firm

ALPENA — The City of Alpena has signed a contract with an area assessing firm to handle the city’s assessing responsibility for the next two years after it was unable to hire a level three assessor to replace Jeff Shea, who is retiring at the end of the month.

Alpena Municipal Council approved the contract, which will pay Berg Assessing and Consulting $75,000 a year for the next two years to work for the city. A lack of level three assessors in Michigan also has made filling the position difficult for Alpena and Montmorency counties in the past.

Shea said the city is familiar with Berg, as it was hired to do the most recent city-wide appraisal in 2016-17, and it has two level three assessors on staff to handle the workload of Alpena, plus 12 other municipalities. He said a level three assessor, who is also known as a Michigan Advanced Assessing Officer, is needed to handle the different types of property classes and many tax duties that come with the job. He said the city only had one person respond to its advertising, but the candidate was only a level one and not qualified to handle the intricacies of the job.

“To step into this job you need the five years experience because of the different aspects of it,” Shea said. “It is different than say an assessor in a township who deals with typically residential, agriculture and a little bit of commercial, here there is a ton of commercial and a ton of industrial and you need a level of expertise to assess some properties that are $30 million properties.”

One downfall of the deal with Berg is that there will not be a full-time assessor at city hall. At Monday’s meeting council voted not to pay an extra $15,000 a year to have one of the company’s assessors in the Alpena office three days a week with limited hours. Beginning June 4, all correspondence and questions will be forwarded to Rogers City to Bergs’ office. Shea said Berg is good about getting back with residents and most hear back from him the same day or the following day from when the call or email was made.

“We will have it set up so if there is a call that comes into my office, it will automatically be forwarded to them and someone on their end will handle it,” he said.

At Monday’s meeting City Manager Greg Sundin said the city still intends on hiring a full-time assessor, but that it is likely to take time to do so. Shea said until then Berg should do a fine job and it is possible council consider keeping it onboard after the two year deal expires.

“It is going to be a little cheaper having them do it and everything works out you don’t know what can happen,” Shea said. “The plan right now however is to get another full-time assessor back in an office at city hall.”

Steve Schulwitz can be reached via email at sschulwitz@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5689. Follow Steve on Twitter ss_alpenanews.

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