Avalon Council Responds to Building Complaints

AVALON – Lorraine Botticelli, a property owner on 30th Street in Avalon, sent an email to borough council members Aug. 7. For 30 years her family has owned the property that is just a short walk to the boardwalk, the Community Center and the entrance to the beach.
She went on to call 2018 “The worst summer I have ever spent in Avalon.”
The next day at a meeting of borough council, Business Administrator Scott Wahl made a presentation concerning the issue that has riled a number of residents and resulted in several weeks of public outrage at council meetings at what many residents have termed “out of control” construction.
Wahl’s presentation represented a formal response from the borough. It resulted after several internal meetings of officials concerning construction ordinances, code violations and growing public demands that the municipality takes action.
The borough took some steps immediately including expanding the hours for code enforcement officials so that they corresponded with beginning and closing hours for active construction. 
The borough also prepared, and hand-delivered a letter to general contractors detailing expectations for code compliance.
The presentation delimited attempts by the borough to gather data on active home construction projects and to match the data to various forms of complaints and code violations.
Wahl used the data to argue that construction was not as widespread as complaints made it seem, but he also pointed to select contractors who routinely amassed warnings and summons for code violations, treating them not as an indication of what needs to change at a work site, but rather as a cost of doing business.
Wahl’s presentation moved through issues of potential prohibition of construction on summer holiday periods like Memorial Day Weekend, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day Weekend.
He reviewed possible changes to work hours on construction days. The presentation pointed to new regulations in Stone Harbor that constrain the nature of construction work allowed on Saturdays in summer.
Wahl discussed the impact of trailers, dumpsters and street storage of materials at or near construction sites. The earlier data had shown that the positioning of dumpsters and tool trainers had been second only to noise and hour violations when it came to code complaints from the public.
Wahl’s slides explored the possibility of using a stop-work order in situations where a contractor’s repeated violations required submission by the contractor of a formal plan to remedy the situation at a work site.
The presentation touched on the complaints that pollutants, especially plastic particulates, are presenting environmental hazards to neighbors and marine ecosystems, but it failed to outline many specific actions the borough can take in this regard.
The focus was on the county Department of Health and the state Department of Environmental Protection. The borough could, according to Wahl, ask for dust collection bags for saws at construction sites.
The effect of the presentation was to place the ball in the council’s court. The members of council must now indicate their level of interest in changing work hours or banning holiday construction or any of the other potential avenues of action dealt with in Wahl’s presentation.
Following a response from council, the borough could begin a process of ordinance changes that would likely continue through to October before they could be fully implemented.
For the public who complained this summer, it is the council’s response to the potential actions outlined in the presentation that will determine if the summer of 2019 is materially better than 2018.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.