At last week’s Shamong Township Committee meeting, the ordinance governing property maintenance was reviewed.
The ordinance was tabled during the previous meeting and is a topic that has come up several times in public comments in the form of complaints about the state of houses in some neighborhoods.
Township building code official Edward Toussaint and zoning official Chuck Schmidt attended the meeting to aid the committee’s review.
Shamong currently has no property maintenance code. Vacant and abandoned properties the community has complained about, often referring to them as “eyesores,” brought the matter to the forefront.
“Abandoned homes are the bane of our existence, and we really need to get them taken care of, there’s no doubt about that,” Mayor Kenneth Long said.
It hasn’t been much of a problem in the newer, bigger neighborhoods, but the older neighborhoods and the individual lots along the major roads have provided issues.
“If it comes down to going to court, it winds up getting thrown out because it’s not clearly written in our code,” Toussaint said.
Many of the problems have to do with things such as high grass, and Shamong Township does not have an ordinance that addresses high grass.
Long proposed the idea of passing an ordinance for vacant homes but was shot down by Toussaint because if there is no property maintenance code, the vacant home code would be useless.
“You would have nothing to enforce,” Toussaint said.
The vacant/abandoned property ordinance that a town puts in place is to make a bank register a bank-owned property, along with an in-state representative who is liable and responsible for that property, so if there is an issue, that would be who the violations go to. This representative would also be responsible to go to court and responsible for paying the fines.
Banks standardly need to wait 333 days to foreclose on a property. However, if a town adopts a vacant/abandoned property ordinance, it allows a bank to speed that process up to six months, giving it the incentive to push the properties instead of just keeping them on their list as write-offs.
“That’s why they just sit on them. They don’t rush to foreclose, they just sit there,” Toussaint said. “And, unfortunately, the people that pay the price are the people that live on both sides of these vacant properties.”
Long described this code as a concern when looking toward the future.
“The property maintenance code is probably OK today because you’re (Toussaint and Schmidt) here, but when you’re not here, then what?” Long asked.
He recommended the code be annually visited for alterations or “sunsetted” so it will not be in perpetuity, and the committee will have to make decisions when Toussaint and Schmidt are gone in the future.
“At the end of every year, we will look at how the code did, what happened and everything in between and then we’ll get into the next year,” Long said. “If this will sunset every year, it allows the town to take a look at it and have that discussion.”
“As township officials, we all have an obligation to protect the life, safety and welfare of every resident,” Toussaint said. “That’s what the property maintenance code does.”
Committeeman Martin Mozitis said some people don’t mind living in poorly kept conditions and have been living like this for years in Shamong.
This opened the argument that some do not mind living this way and some do.
Deputy Mayor Timothy Gimbel referenced the ideology that back in the day, folks would just ask their neighbors to cut the grass.
“I would love to say that we could still do that for every neighbor, but it’s 2015 and that just doesn’t happen anymore,” Gimbel said.
All the township has to refer to is a weed and debris ordinance, and it is weak at best, according to Schmidt.
After much discussion, the ordinance was tabled to revisit during the meeting on Nov. 10.
If the township does approve a property maintenance ordinance, it would have to establish an abandoned property list after canvassing the town and adding all vacant homes to the list.
