Web site to show 'animal houses' in Belmar

Web site to show 'animal houses' in Belmar


By ERIK LARSEN
Gannett News Service


BELMAR
With a little help from Google Earth, visitors to the municipal Web site soon will be able to zoom in on a satellite picture or map of the borough's 320 summer rental homes to a street-level view of the properties.

Click on a specific address and up will come details about a property, which will enable visitors to keep tabs on the legal status of rentals designated as "animal houses" in Belmar, Mayor Kenneth E. Pringle said.

"We expect to have photos of the 81 animal houses (in Belmar) uploaded by the end of next week," said Kevin O'Donnell, the borough's Web master. "Over time we will also be including information regarding the status of recent summonses issued against the property, occupancy limits of the units, et cetra."

Pringle said the information online will serve not only the interests of permanent residents wary and watchful of summer rowdies, but those seasonal renters with an interest in properties subject to legal entanglements.

As of this weekend, Monmouth County Sheriff's officers have assisted Belmar police in standing watch over four rental properties in Belmar (at the expense of the homeowners) judged to be habitual animal houses, Police Chief Jack Hill said.

Visitors who log on to the Belmar Web site beginning this week or next will be able to stand watch on their own via a Google satellite view or map of Belmar. Rentals will be depicted by colored icons with the color to reflect summonses issued and if the property is an animal house, O'Donnell said.

In one column, visitors will be able to scroll down a list of rentals by address. The visitor will also be able to activate a filter so that certain categories of rentals may be viewed separately (e.g. properties that haven't had a summons for one year to those that now require an armed guard).

When a visitor clicks on an icon, a box will open with the address, lot and block number, owner's name, the number of rental units on that particular property and in the case of animal houses, the amount of the bond posted by the property owner, O'Donnell said.

Eventually, thumbnail photos taken at street level of the properties will be included in the box, which may be enlarged by clicking on the photo. O'Donnell said that feature may take another few weeks to perfect, given the volume of photos that need to be taken and uploaded to the borough's server.

Some of this information is already online, but in the form of charts and lists somewhat difficult to find and navigate. One piece of information that visitors still won't be able to find: Privacy laws prevent the borough from obtaining the names of the legal tenants on the leases, Pringle said.

Pat McMahon, director of code enforcement in Belmar, said the number of summer rentals as of Memorial Day weekend was 320. At this time last year, there were 356 rentals, with 390 by Labor Day weekend. In 1993, there were 1,500 such rentals in town.

"A few years ago, on a major summer weekend, we would get about 40 noise complaints, now we're in the 20s. We're making an impact, and we're going to keep the pressure on," Hill said.

In a letter to summer renters this year, which Pringle wrote and hand-delivered himself to many of the rentals, he wrote: "If you've been here before, you can see that Belmar is changing. Every year, more and more rentals are replaced by owner-occupied homes . . . If it seems like Belmar just keeps getting more strict, it's not your imagination."

Lee Dugan, 23, of New Milford, a renter in Belmar, said he thought the letter was "pretty stern," but his roommates were more preoccupied with the mayor's unannounced visit.

"He just said he was checking in on every house," Dugan said, expressing surprise. "Our first reaction was, we must be in a lot of trouble if the mayor is knocking on our front door."

"We respect the fact we're not locals," said Mike Califano, 24, of Fair Lawn, another summer renter.

"Everyone my age loves to be down here. It's a good time. (But) sometimes law enforcement is a little tough