Grafton Township residents question assessor’s job performance

For years, residents and township trustees alike have called into question the transparency, accessibility and performance of Grafton Township Assessor Alan Zielinski.

What began as complaints eventually boiled over into calls for resignation, both from elected officials and residents, over issues such as the assessor’s intention at the end of 2017 to simultaneously work two different assessor jobs.

Township resident John Mueller called Zielinski’s actions disgusting conduct by a public official, according to an email sent to Grafton Township Supervisor Eric Ruth over Mueller’s failed efforts to retrieve property assessment data through the Freedom of Information Act.

2014 assessments

Although townships were up for a quadrennial assessment in 2015, Zielinski – whose term as assessor ends in 2021 – performed an assessment in 2014, which saw the creation of dozens of new neighborhoods.

This prompted Freedom of Information Act requests from township resident Bryan McKnight and Mueller for materials such as property index numbers, neighborhood codes and sales assessment ratios to determine whether each neighborhood was properly assessed. A request by McKnight for such information was denied and resulted in a 2015 lawsuit that eventually was settled and cost the township about $25,000.

Mueller said he received some of the data he was after in the form of a township database so large it could not be opened in Microsoft Excel and was otherwise indecipherable.

Zielinski said the database was in a distribution format compatible with the office’s software license agreement, and the public access counselor handling the FOIA was able to search the database and access the data.

“Our role as a government agency is to obey the law and serve the taxpayers,” Zielinski said in an email response. “However, should the two ever be at odds, obeying the law should and will always take precedence.”

As for the sales assessment ratios – or the assessed value of a property to its selling price – Zielinski said in January that while reports on those figures were done every year, they weren’t saved until 2017.

Follow-up requests from Mueller have resulted in rulings from the state’s public access counselor and requests for review, some of which still are in process over certain sales assessment ratio data.

Mueller’s concerns over fair assessments were further exacerbated when he claimed an appeal of Zielinski’s lakefront home on Turnberry Trail that saw the property decrease in fair cash value by $120,000, or 25 percent.

“I can’t fathom how many man-hours and tax dollars have been wasted to fight the release of very public information,” Mueller said during the October meeting. “I bet you the time it takes to generate a coherent batch of data from the township assessment software takes a few minutes.”

This notion was corroborated by former deputy assessor Marty Kinczel at the meeting, who said it would take 10 to 15 minutes to generate the data sheet Kinczel had prepared in response to McKnight’s lawsuit.

In a response to one of Mueller’s emails, Ruth said all of the trustees agree the data Mueller is requesting should be released.

“Unfortunately, Al refuses to work with our attorney, and he refuses to cooperate with the board,” Ruth wrote in the email. “We do not have access to his data, and we don’t have the authority to force him to release it. It is absurd that you have had to fight this hard for data that we all agree you have the legal right to see.”

Boone County

In August 2017, Zielinski announced he would be taking a job in Boone County as the chief assessment officer effective Jan. 1 and would not continue working in Grafton after the new year unless some bizarre circumstance would occur.

He recommended Kinczel be contracted as assessor through 2021.

Not confident in Zielinski’s ability to handle both obligations for several months – he already was working in Boone part time at the time – the board recommended Zielinski resign before Jan. 1, which he refused to do.

In January, however, Zielinski said his future with Boone County was under discussion, and he would be taking the oath of office for Grafton. This frustrated some trustees who felt the possibility of Zielinski working two jobs and reducing his time in Grafton to two to three days a week was unfair to taxpayers.

Zielinski resigned from Boone on Jan. 5, according to his separation agreement.

Kinczel, who now is the assessor for Boone County, was in attendance at October’s meeting to request unused vacation pay totaling about $1,500 that he said was yet to be paid. He said that his signed, written timesheets show how many vacation days were used and were available to him.

Zielinski said under the terms of the assessor handbook, Kinczel would not get the full number of weeks he said he was owed as of Jan. 1 if he left during the year.

Public accessibility

During July’s board meeting, Gail Patyk of Huntley spoke regarding a reduction in the assessment of her land that backs up to Reed Road, which Zielinski told her she was eligible for.

However, the reduction was not included on her assessment. When she arranged a meeting with Zielinski after multiple attempts, Patyk said Zielinski told her she would not receive the reduction.

After requesting that he pull up her neighbor’s property, which did have the reduction, Zielinski said that was a mistake that would be corrected, Patyk said. She eventually received the reduction after working with the McHenry County Assessor’s Office.

Patyk said she felt she was lied to and that Zielinski does not keep regular office hours.

"If you're supposed to be working
40 hours a week, you need to be here
40 hours a week," Patyk said "You don't show up and you don't personally care about the people in Grafton Township, and if you don't like your position, then resign it."