COM 0641.001 2010-2012 - Laserfiche WebLink

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IAAO Review April 3, 2012 Page 4 supervisors from both offices, as well as division administrators and Finance Director or Deputy. Normally the minutes of these meetings are shared with the whole staff by email. All of the supervisors, including the administrator, have an open door policy and as far as can be determined the staff has no qualms about using that access. Use of workshops is increasing. Currently, because of the newness of the staff, the goal is to hold two half day sessions a month with the appraisers and hope to expand that to the other sections. ■ Limited training opportunities for staff. Currently, there are no requirements for ongoing, continuing appraisal related education for staff. Division emphasis has been on in- service training by senior staff. Over fourteen internal workshops have been offered in the last two years. Last year the division brought in a market modeling expert to train a group of senior staff in the process and will be bringing him back this May for a follow up session. Additionally, they are sending 8 (out of 15) new appraisers to Honolulu for IAAO Course 101. Arrangements are being made for next fiscal year to bring an additional IAAO course to Hilo in December. • Vague property class definitions and an over - reliance on zoned use rather than actual use in determining property class. This is a legacy from the state. The values for vacant land are based on comparable sales with the same zoning; improved sales are compared to others of like use as improved. Less dependence on the zoning and more on actual highest and best use analysis would be welcome. ■ Limited use of digital maps and photographic images. We were informed that the County has a geographic information system (GIS) and has acquired oblique imagery of buildings. Yet we were informed that the Division does not routinely use these technologies and has no plan to implement them. This is a misunderstanding. All the appraisal staff have access to both the GIS and photographic databases and use them extensively (training is provided). The misunderstanding comes from a reply by the administrator that these databases are not integrated with the IAS system, which they could be but are not yet. • Lack of analysis of workloads, productivity, and standards against which to evaluate performance. Workloads are analyzed and redistributed on a 2 -3 year basis. They do not necessarily follow zone boundaries. The workload is monitored on an ongoing basis, as is productivity using queries on the database, and assistance is assigned to appraisers when an imbalance is found or reported. However, this process has been disrupted in the last two years by staff turnover. Assistance could not be allocated as the entire staff was dealing with an overload. This situation is improving as positions are filled and trained. Performance standards are checked by reviewing completed assessments and this will continue. The ability to run more specific and frequent sales ratios will also assist greatly in maintaining standards. The IAAO's Assessment Practices: Self - Evaluation Guide was obtained last May and is being used to guide our future course as resources allow.