New assistant prosecutor to zero in on abandoned homes
Modernizing code department also on list of to-do's
Robert McKeon, the city’s director of property improvement and neighborhood preservation and assistant city prosecutor, has officially been handed the reins to address abandoned properties in the city.
At the Sept. 17 council meeting, city council members unanimously voted to amend the city’s abandoned properties ordinance. The change passed the responsibility of addressing abandoned properties in the city from the city’s planning and redevelopment director, Donald Sammet, to the newly created director of property improvement, McKeon, or the city manager’s designee.
In 2004, former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey signed into law The Abandoned Property Rehabilitation Act, effectively allowing municipalities in the state new ways and means to gain control of abandoned properties to rehabilitate and restore them for more advantageous use.
“Over all, it gave the community the ability to accelerate the process by which they could take control of the [abandoned] properties,” McKeon [shown above] said.
There are about 60 or so properties on the Asbury Park list, which was compiled in 2012 when the city first adopted its abandoned properties ordinance and may need to be updated, he said.
Once a property is placed on the abandoned property list, legal notification is mailed out to the property owner. The property owner can appeal and provide argument as to how their property does not fall into the “abandoned” category. If the property is deemed abandoned and added onto the abandoned properties list, the owner is charged a fee that increases annually if the property stays on the list. The fee acts as a lien on the property.
“It tries to get them, rather that to incur the fees, to sell it [the property] or fix it up, but certainly to get passed the stage it is in now,” he said.
An ordinance to set the city’s fee structure must still be adopted, he said.
McKeon, whose annual salary is $68,000, was hired July 28 and immediately took over as the head of the city’s code enforcement department. From then to now, he has been assessing how the department runs and what can be done to improve its functionality.
At present, he has two full-time code enforcement officers and one part-time code enforcement officer. The three carry out code enforcement inspections — whether they be for the issuance of certificates of occupancy, title transfers, citizen complaints, or violations discovered or identified by the code enforcement officers in the course of their day — for the 4,565 properties in the city subject to inspection.
His vision for the department is to bring it into the modern age and turn it around to a proactive, rather than reactive, department that is willing to address issues in a timely manner. Currently, the process to enter and track code violations and issues is done on paper, and there is no digital database for inter-departmental access for fire, police, construction or zoning officials to quickly ascertain the status of any properties subject to inspection, he said.
“That’s number one, we’re in the dark ages,” he said.
Most recently, McKeon met with Fire Chief Kevin Keddy, who has taken the lead on researching companies that can provide the proper software and what the cost might be, he said.
McKeon, 54, grew up in Toms River and has been a “shore guy” his entire life, he said. He has lived in Wanamassa, West Long Branch, Interlaken and has held an office in Asbury Park for over a decade. On Oct.1, he moved to a downtown Asbury Park apartment on a permanent basis, he said.
McKeon received his undergraduate degree from Seton Hall University in 1982 and graduated from Seton Hall law school in 1987. He has worked for private firms and independently at his own practice in property and real estate law, including commercial and business litigation, for the majority of his career.
His new role offers him the opportunity to work for the public sector, a challenge that McKeon is eager to accept and has brought a second wind to his work life, he said.
“I’m lucky that I’m at this stage of my life and able to find this feeling again — rejuvenated,” he said. “I love to get up and come here and do what I’m doing. It sounds flowery, but it’s the truth.”
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