Brick residents will lose their “home court advantage” if officials lay off eight building inspectors and go with third parties instead, a longtime township inspector said.
“Our building inspectors live in town,” Frank Mizer, the township building-subcode official, told the Township Council at its Nov. 10 meeting. “We are here seven days a week. If you have building inspectors that live in town, work in town, you have that home court advantage. If you don’t have a residential building inspector, you’re going to get ripped off.”
Mizer spoke during the public portion of the meeting, after council members voted 6- 1 to go out to bid for building-subcode official and janitorial services. Councilwoman Kathy Russell cast the lone no vote.
Russell said this week that she didn’t think the township should outsource the building inspectors and could raise permit and inspection fees to deal with the department’s current deficit.
“I don’t believe the residents will get the proper attention they need,” she said.
Mizer said he had been in the construction business since 1961. He listed a number of major North Jersey projects he oversaw before coming to Brick Township.
“I’ve taken all that knowledge back into our building department and tried to improve it,” he told the council. “Tonight I want to talk to the senior citizens.”
It was the building department inspectors who caught an unscrupulous building contractor who was duping senior citizens out of their money and not completing jobs he had pressured them to do, Mizer said.
“It wouldn’t have been able to be done without the building department,” he said. “All of the building department inspectors live in Brick.”
“Not all of them,” council President Ruthanne Scaturro said.
“Please don’t correct me,” Mizer told Scaturro. “I know the facts. None of these issues would have been addressed if we had a third-party agency in town.”
Some audience members applauded when Mizer finished his remarks, which prompted Scaturro to rap her gavel.
“I am sorry,” she said. “There will be no clapping, applauding, no cheering, no booing, no hissing. I will have anybody who does not follow the rules removed. Please, this is not a cheering section.”
Mayor Stephen C. Acropolis said the township would still have a building department, just not inspectors.
“I don’t want to go back and retrace some of the problems we’ve had in the past with the building department,” Acropolis said. “The building department will continue to function, just without the building inspectors.”
Acropolis said he hoped that third-party companies would employ some of Brick’s inspectors in the future.
The building department is losing between $20,000 to $30,000 a month, the mayor said.
“Brick Township is 97 percent built out,” Acropolis said. “We don’t have those projects. If we didn’t have those eight people go, there will be eight other bodies going.”
Building department expenses, including salaries, have traditionally been paid for through revenue generated from permits and inspections fees. But the sour real estate and tight credit markets have led to fewer home sales and fewer permits and inspections, Business Administrator Scott M. Pezarras has said.
The township collected roughly $68,000 in permit fees in September, down from the typical month of around $100,000, Pezarras has said.
Acropolis said he met with officials from a number of northern Ocean County towns earlier this year to see if the Brick building inspectors could service those towns as well, to generate more revenue.
But it was later determined that while Brick would charge $60 for an inspector, a third party could do it for $30, the mayor said.
Larry Callahan, a local contractor, urged the council and Acropolis to raise the fees to increase revenue and avoid layoffs.
“They [inspectors] go out and check a lot of things,” he said.
“They also don’t catch a lot of things,” Scaturro said.
Scaturro questioned how Kristy Shay Construction, a local developer, was able to do some projects without the proper permits.
“Explain to me how Kristy Shay got everything he got,” she said.
Permit and inspection fees are regulated by the state, Scaturro said.
“Obviously, it wasn’t explained to you by the people that asked you to come here today what the situation is,” Scaturro told Callahan.
“Nobody asked me to come here,” Callahan replied.
“OK,” Scaturro said with a laugh.
Residents may have to wait a “long time” for third-party inspectors to get to a job, Callahan said.
“You wait a long time for your inspectors here too,” Scaturro replied. “We have serious organizational problems there. I don’t think you understand the whole mechanism of how our departments work.”
Lynn Mizer, Mizer’s wife, told the council the township could raise the permit and inspection fees.
“Oh, you can,” said Lynne Mizer, a Millstone Township employee. “You can raise them. The state is only a guideline to go on. You have to send it to the DCA (state Department of Community Affairs) for approval. We’ve done it many, many times in Millstone Township.
“I can understand layoffs,” she added. “But to get rid of a whole department?”
The township is facing a nearly $4 million shortfall in next year’s budget, which Acropolis has blamed on the state’s 4-percent cap on the amount that can be raised by taxation over the previous year’s municipal budget.
“We are going to end this year’s budget fine,” Pezarras said. “The problem is next year and other one-time revenues we are not going to replace.”
“We’ve got to make up that number,” Acropolis said. “It’s not about which people are good or bad.”
Acropolis again offered to take a 10-percent pay cut and urged all employees to do the same to save more jobs.
“I’ll take the 10-percent pay cut,” the mayor said. “Is everybody else willing to do it? Join me. Let’s do it together. It’s not about good or bad. It’s what we have to do.”