Middle May Auction 350 Tracts

COURT HOUSE – Business Administrator Elizabeth Terenik opened the Middle Township Committee’s June 19 meeting with a proposal for disposing of 350 township-owned surplus properties with an assessed value of $7.3 million. 
Terenik, recently Atlantic City’s planning director, has seen the approach she proposed work in Atlantic County. She recommended placing the properties with an auction company.
The township leaves to the company all of the tasks associated with the property sale. The company awarded the contract by the township is compensated by a buyer’s fee.
“We have no use for these township-owned properties,” Terenik said. “We are not collecting on them, and it is time to get them back on the tax rolls,” she added.
Along with the township-owned surplus real estate, Terenik spoke about properties eligible for foreclosure. These are properties that have not paid taxes from as early as 2006.
Terenik wants to go through these properties and set priorities for action. She said that many of them have no structures and range in value from a few hundred dollars to six figures.
What Terenik’s discussion focused on was attacking blight before it ruins neighborhoods. “It is something we need to be proactive on,” she said.
The push was for action to deal with a large number of abandoned or foreclosed properties. They can act as a downward pressure on property values. Terenik was about using “all the tools in the tool box.”
Those tools include allowing tax lien holders the power to immediately initiate foreclosure proceedings, provide access for lien holders to make repairs on properties to preserve property values, initiate special tax sales, even, in appropriate cases, taking over properties through eminent domain.
The committee agreed to invite an auction firm to a future meeting to have the contractor explain how they would go about the process.
As part of the discussion, Police Chief Christopher Leusner updated the committee on the enforcement of the new ordinance on registration of vacant houses.
Passed in March, the ordinance requires owners of vacant properties to register the property, identify a responsible individual for contact, and pay a periodic fee which the township hopes will encourage owners to move the property back to occupancy.
The majority of properties that meet the definition as vacant are owned by banks that hold a mortgage on the property. Those banks will soon be getting the first invoices under the new law.
To ensure that property owners of second homes do not get caught up in the invoicing process, Leusner has instituted an escalating approval process for properties not owned by banks.
That process will ensure that the property does meet the definition of the ordinance before an invoice is sent.
Together the agenda items at the township work session demonstrated a heightened concern for dealing with vacant, foreclosed, abandoned and township-owned properties that serve to depress overall property values and create safety and nuisance problems.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.