Board of Equalization Meeting   7/1/2020

And I think he was resistant to that idea.

I was appointed by Ann Mallick, but I'm not in her district.

How have I forgotten his name?

Wylie, thank you.

So I'm going to try to follow up.

OK. Oh, that'd be great to have Peter here.

He's coming, right, Billie?

So yeah, he's coming to where he is.

And while I'm saying that, let me bring the agenda up so I have it in front of me.

I believe you're going to introduce Bill.

So Danielle, if you would go ahead and start the recording.

It's already started.

So, to the agenda, so introducing our board members now, now Bill, did Bill serve with all of you already?

David and David.

Okay.

Anthony is moving me.

and actually, Mr. Cromwell, if you'd like to introduce yourself, your background.

and that moved on to the foundation in 2000.

Anthony, you are muted at the moment.

I try to keep myself muted when I'm not the one to talk.

So go ahead.

And I believe, if I recall the agenda correctly, that's later on down the line, but I'm happy to do it whenever it pleases the board.

This was the one attached to the meeting invite.

If that's the one that you had, yes.

So basically this is up to you board members to kind of make your decision as to who the new chair, vice chair and secretary will be.

What are we doing with regard to secretary this year in terms of reporting and so forth?

If that's the way you want to do it we can do that again.

typing abilities aren't as good.

Yeah.

I think it might be... Yeah, you're muted.

There's a big improvement, I was gonna say.

Anthony, thank you for doing it last year.

But it wasn't too, it wasn't, it really wasn't too, you know, with the process we did, so.

If someone else wants to do it, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll cede to that, but I'll plan on not doing it then next year.

How do we end up doing that this year?

And if I had remembered that step, we would put that on the agenda.

That way we could have copies of the minutes just to make sure they're correct.

That way you'll have time to look them over.

OK.

Very good.

Yeah, who wants to?

I would move that you be secretary.

I second that.

All in favor.

Chair and vice chair.

Yeah, chair and vice chair, exactly.

I don't remember.

Do you have a tough job?

Wasn't too bad.

Anybody may raise their hand.

Would you be willing?

Mr. Cromwell did it as well.

I'm now the junior senator from Scottsdale, so.

I'll also move.

Second.

I'm making notes for this right now.

No, I haven't been sworn in yet.

Ms. Pape moved to nominate Mr. Ferrall and did somebody second that?

Okay.

I was quick to second.

Yes, and then Mr. Arsali, you nominated Mr. Van Roijen, and who seconded that?

Karen seconded it.

Okay, and did you guys vote on Mr. Van Roijen?

No, I think we voted.

OK, so all in favor?

Aye.

Basically, it's to fill in for the chair if the chair is not present.

Is that OK, Anthony?

OK.

Any objection to that?

I second that.

I'm in favor.

Aye.

cases or hearings.

Yes.

Oh, geez.

It's inappropriate chat that's people who have logged in who have access to.

OK. A lot of people.

Can we eliminate this?

I saw it pop up and I didn't even look at it.

I don't know the answer to that.

Anthony Bissette, do you know the answer to that?

There's no legal reason you cannot stop comments going forward.

Can I remove that person from the meeting altogether?

I don't know what, if any, rules this body has adopted.

Could we get an answer by the next meeting?

We will throw them out if we were doing this now at the County Building.

Well, this is actually an open... Oh, it's an open meeting.

It's an open meeting, but we are now talking, but we didn't allow other people to speak yet.

It's for them to be able to listen unless they are a applicant.

And so if you want to turn off, if you know how to do so administratively, there's no reason you cannot turn off chat and Q&A at this point.

Hopefully it doesn't come back.

You can eliminate it there.

Okay.

Of course, it's a slightly different form of Zoom, kind of higher levels, so it might be a little different technical answer as to how it's done.

Basically, every public meeting that's occurred all across the country on Zoom, where it is technically possible for folks to add questions and chats, this is what happens.

OK.

I mean, this is incredibly offensive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Again, it may be cold comfort, but take some cold comfort in knowing that virtually every public body that meets for the first time during this pandemic has this experience.

This is my first experience with this.

Yeah, me too.

And if I have anything to offer from her, I will let you all know that.

I doubt you're going to get anything very quickly because I'm having a Board of Supervisors meeting at this moment.

Well, she replied back to me, so.

OK.

So I'll let you know when I get more.

I just want to let you know that you have the ability to kind of set that stage and figure out how much you want to allow and when to, you know, either to set a certain amount of time for each party and whether, you know, maybe it's a case by case basis and you kind of just, you know, the chairman kind of drives the meeting.

I don't know what everybody else thinks.

We currently have 15.

just based on recent or reviews that I've recently responded to or have not responded to yet and will be soon.

Maybe just leave it at the hour for now and then come back to this thought after maybe our first time or second time around.

But you have to advertise up front though, right?

We do have to advertise the entire hearing schedule.

You don't have to say like specific time, like between this time to this time.

And then we set those however you want us to set them in between that period.

Yes.

And the only way to really do that, I think, would be to have them sit in on the Zoom session and hear our deliberations, unless we want to do them all at the end of the meetings.

But it is, since it's an open meeting, I guess they'd have to.

It's an open meeting, yeah.

Or a member?

Yes, a panelist.

But I don't think you can go back into the lobby.

Yeah, I can put them back.

If you wanted to change it, this is the time to talk about it.

But if not, it is what it is.

Was that correct?

I seem to remember that we basically had four hours worth and we would include four if we could schedule four in that day.

I think we had some drop off, right?

We had some drop off, yeah.

Oh, that's right.

Is that correct?

And of course, it's not up now.

She's unable to see.

If you look at... Yeah.

Right.

But we have them in the record, so she can always go back and play it back and take a look.

But Emily told me you guys had a situation, so I'm just here to monitor and see if you have any questions how I can help.

Thanks, Serena.

I'll just lurk in the background.

All the people that came in have left, so nobody's logged in anymore.

Does anybody else have any questions or comments about the hearings themselves before we go on to the next?

That's kind of what I was thinking.

and be able to review it and those will be to you at least a week in advance of the hearing.

The applicant I assume still has to get their paperwork in ahead of time with anything they're going to present.

I'm restricted from adding information that I haven't shared with them at least five days in advance.

and they want to introduce something new.

So it can be provided to you in advance.

OK.

Mm-hmm.

That would be helpful to have it because they might not have the capability of sharing their screens and yeah it would just be good for us to have something if they are arguing something if they really want us to consider it we got to have some kind of physical copy or electronic copy I guess whatever they're arguing.

How are they going to present?

So anything they provided, anything else they would have to provide verbally.

so that they're on an equal level?

We could, you know, if they asked for something like that, we could provide a computer in our conference room for them to come in and attend the hearing on the computer.

Right, right.

I think giving that option when communicating with them would probably be a good idea when we're talking about, I think just giving that option to the folks who are doing the appeals.

Are they gonna be facile enough with their Zoom or are we gonna be stumbling through the meetings as they're learning it?

Does that sound appropriate?

I'm just, I'm a little wary that the public's not going to be as comfortable with this as we think they are.

Honestly, I don't know what to think at this point of how they're going to be accepting of this.

It is what it is.

I know certainly within our office, we've gotten very comfortable with this medium.

If you can provide that in the conference room, and maybe people are just going to be more comfortable just calling in, but just providing that so they can see us and they can see what's happening and maybe however they're presenting, I think that'll be really helpful to just have that.

All right, so are there any other questions on that topic on the hearings themselves, the process?

I would be willing to staff the conference room or help people walk through the Zoom meeting if that's something you need.

Well, thank you, Serena.

Nice.

And I'll follow up with you or Billy will.

Sounds great.

Thanks.

Middle of July is the earliest that the first hearings could happen.

I think in the past we've tried to pick two days a week and just put them out there.

I think we did like a Tuesday, Thursday, and we did Tuesdays in the morning and Thursdays in the afternoon at one point.

Yeah.

One is we're expecting in a couple of weeks.

Oh, congratulations.

and then I will be teaching starting, I teach at a law school so I will be teaching starting late August but right now seminar, I teach seminar class, right now they're scheduling all between five and seven p.m. so as long as we wrap up by like four on any day then otherwise my schedule is flexible.

Four?

And this might be an impetus for me to be able to get Mr. Galloway to appoint somebody.

I mean, mention Peter Wiley again.

I mean, he's had a lot of time to think about this.

I mean, any other suggestions here?

Do you want to start sooner or not?

I'm assuming you can't start this advertising and take a day or two?

Well, we will advertise it probably tomorrow as soon as we set the phone string and put together the ad.

Excuse me, it does take, we can put the information in to be advertised, but it takes a few days to get it in there, so keep that in mind.

Is that agreeable to people?

Like I said, once it gets to late August, I would prefer to extend it before 4.

But it looks like at the moment, we only need four meetings.

On the 16th, we'll have people submitting all their information and all that.

Or is that too early?

I'm thinking that Peter has already discussed with them their issues and they know what they want to say at this point.

So we have all of that and all I need to do is make sure we get it digitally provided so that I can send the links to you.

and that's 25 slots, or sorry, that's 20 slots and at the moment we only need 15.

Right.

I mean, you say there might be 20 potentially?

It would be helpful if you kind of set a similar schedule in August just that you had flexibility with whatever restrictions you need.

Is that enough, do you think, to sort of?

You could ask guys again later, right?

And it's done before your teaching, right, Anthony?

Perfect.

That will be pre-advertised.

What day are your people?

I know it's not going to come up with the morning.

And that would be November 3rd.

November 3rd is election day.

November 3rd is an election day.

I'm going to do it the next week.

Do you want to have December just to be safe?

Let's go ahead and throw December in there.

So that would be the first of December, 12-1.

Is that correct?

I have 14 meetings, yeah?

OK. And the first 10 will be for the regular appeals.

Ideally, we'll do it.

Yes.

Perfect.

and no never mind I won't say that.

To some extent it's up to the applicant really whether they can do it I guess.

He's busy hosting fireworks.

So Peter, how far in advance do you need to advertise the meetings?

10 days, 10 days.

I mean, to advertise it, but to have them blocked out on our schedule, to keep people from trying to line up for the last meeting, you know, we could have- Okay, that won't be a problem.

how expensive it was and how we wanted to do something to avoid it.

You went over about 250 bucks.

OK, Anthony?

I'm sufficiently traveling my mouse cursor from one screen to another.

Danielle can share her screen if you would like and then you talk.

Without questions, that's it.

And on that last item, basically when the new members renew and we get notification through the county executive's office, we let anybody know who needs the training from the Department of Taxation, which is that four-year requirement.

Right.

OK.

And I will get that and the minutes from the last meeting last year to you, to Mr. Ferrall, so that you can provide them to the board members for review prior to that next meeting.

Just make sure that the materials for the meeting indicate that that, in fact, did not.

Mr. Chairman, if you would like to adjourn us.

There being nothing further before the meeting, I make a motion that we adjourn the meeting.

Thanks, Danielle.

Thank you.

And thank you, Anthony.

Good luck, Anthony.

We'll talk.

You too.