Belmar group: Partyers ruining quality of life

Belmar group: Partyers ruining quality of life

Homeowners calling for change
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 04/2/07
BY ERIK LARSEN
COASTAL MONMOUTH BUREAU

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BELMAR — For the past few years, newspapers, including this one, have been writing stories suggesting that the borough is winning the war against its rowdy, sometimes crass nightlife.

Those stories convinced Sandy Alvarez, 44, of 16th Avenue to move to Belmar from North Jersey in 2005.

But she and others who are part of the Belmar Homeowners Association have become convinced that those stories are propaganda, orchestrated by media-savvy borough officials looking to market Belmar to investors as part of its ongoing $500 million downtown redevelopment plan. Two years later, Alvarez said she was misled.

"When I moved to this street, I had two less rentals on my block than I do now," said Alvarez, a flight attendant for Continental Airlines. "I don't think (what officials have said) is accurate townwide. I do think for their redevelopment, they have to publicly make (Belmar) appear better and also appear as if they're doing something about (the bar scene)."

Alvarez lives in the southern end of town, where the borough's summer rentals are concentrated in a several-block radius. Here, overwhelmingly young people in their 20s, with no roots or permanent investment in the borough, pack into summer bungalows, having come "down the shore" to party. From her house, Alvarez can see them in the summer months, drinking on their porches — "pre-gaming" before heading out on foot to the borough's bars. After the bars let out at 2 a.m., the same crowds stumble back to their rental, sometimes not making it back to their units before having to relieve themselves or vomit. They're noisy, their music is blaring and they throw trash on her lawn, Alvarez said.

Over on Ocean Avenue, Doug and Susanne Sweeny live in the summer in a sprawling modern oceanfront house assessed at $1.2 million on the corner of 14th Avenue. The spectacular views of the boardwalk and ocean beyond from their second-floor dining room come at a hefty toll — in 2006, the Sweenys paid $21,183.19 in property taxes, according to borough tax records.

For the Sweenys, snowbirds who claim Florida as their legal residence, it isn't just the nuisance of the noise or the drunken crowds spilling out of a bar down the street after last call — their property has been vandalized. An American flag of sentimental value was ripped down from their home last Fourth of July. A neighbor saw someone using it as a towel before it disappeared into the darkness.

"This has been a chronic problem for a number of years. . . . We had a group of people who were frustrated," said Doug Sweeny, president of the Belmar Homeowners Association and retired head of business strategy for IBM. He now works as a consultant to the Department of Defense, specializing in global telecommunications. Susanne Sweeny, his wife, is a family counselor and has generational ties to Belmar.

The Sweenys and Alvarez are leaders of the group, which has about 200 members and was founded about three years ago to provide residents with a forum to make complaints and appeal to the borough for solutions. They say Belmar's rowdy nightlife is diminishing the quality of their lives and hurting their real estate investment in the town.

While the group professes to be nonpartisan, it doesn't shy away from diving into the borough's political catfights.

"I feel they're political — I don't know if they're partisan. They're not overtly partisan, but they don't support me or the candidates I run with," said Mayor Kenneth E. Pringle, who contends that the group is an informal organization of maybe 80 fair-weather members linked by a secure Yahoo Web page, in which a handful of families, including the Sweenys, call all the shots.

Nevertheless, the group has become something of a political force to be reckoned with in town. In 2005, for the first time since Pringle became mayor in 1990, a Republican was elected to the five-member Borough Council. The association credits that election result in part to its efforts to better inform the electorate, with such venues as their annual "meet-the-candidates forum," with questions submitted to the candidates beforehand, which they started hosting about two years ago.

Pringle, who believes the forum has become partisan, said this year he will ask the League of Women Voters to step in and take it over.

Doug Sweeny objects: "We support anybody that runs for political office. We support both sides of the fence."

Councilman Matthew J. Doherty, a Democrat, who was elected as Pringle's running mate in November, said he finds it ironic that Sweeny, as president of a politically active homeowners association, is not registered to vote in Belmar, as a legal Floridian.

"If they want to be involved in the political process, their leadership, at a minimum, should at least be registered to vote in Belmar," Doherty said.

Sweeny said the amount he pays in property taxes should be qualification enough to be permitted a legitimate voice in Belmar politics and to expect to be able to live in relative peace.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BHA07719/
the website is located here