By: Robin Ford Wallace, Staff Reporter

An anonymous caller who last week asked the Sentinel to examine the propriety of a building permit for the new apartment and office building under construction on the Trenton square apparently took her beef directly to Jerry Kyzer, the city’s building inspector and fire marshal, shortly afterward.

When The Sentinel arrived Jan. 26 at City Hall to investigate, in fact, Kyzer was still agitated from the encounter, windmilling his arms in emphasis as he described his meeting with a woman he identified as Sandy Snyder and her companion, a man he thought was named Downer.  “I was really overwhelmed,” he said.

Kyzer immediately contacted Jerry Brock, the owner of the new building. “If they’re going to be down here jumping all over me, then I need to let him know what’s going on,” he said. 

Kyzer and Brock conferred in private, then both consented to brief interviews.

At issue, Kyzer told the Sentinel, was the way the city of Trenton grants building permits, charging $2.40 per $1,000 of what the building is projected to cost, and trusting the applicant to tell the truth about what that might be. “We’ve always permitted on what the people tell us the building is going to cost,” said Kyzer.  “That’s the way we’ve always done it. They’re saying it’s worth a whole lot more.”  

Another issue the irate couple had raised, said Kyzer, was that Brock was not a state-licensed contractor.

Kyzer said that the city had, as it happened, blocked Brock’s initial attempt to begin construction in July 2009 because the proper plans had not been submitted. But Brock had since corrected that situation, presenting Kyzer with a full set of officially stamped engineered plans. “Everything so far is right where it’s supposed to be,” said Kyzer. “Everything is right on schedule and everything is built to code from these specs.”

The new building, which is next door to Brock’s Restaurant, Jerry Brock’s family business, will contain three offices and one apartment downstairs and six apartments upstairs, said Kyzer, with the back side of the edifice given over to a storage facility.

Jerry Brock, also interviewed on the spot, says he has no clue why anyone would seek to stop construction on his new building and stressed that no one has – hammers are still swinging. 

He suspected it was a matter of sour grapes, he said, with Downer having been disqualified from a contract on the building because he was not himself certified as a contractor. Laws regulating contractors have recently changed, he said, resulting in some confusion. “Nobody’s done anything wrong at all,” he said.     

Brock said the family restaurant had been his father’s pet project and was now mostly run by the older Brock’s longtime, trusted employees, while Brock Junior sees himself more as a builder than a restaurateur. 

He said he’d begun the building next door to the restaurant because he saw the need for “some newer stuff within the city, just to attract more people to Trenton, you know, make it bigger, better, make the economy better, more foot traffic, more businesses, more jobs, more tax dollars.” 

Kyzer had said he would take the matter before the Trenton City Commission but did not do so at the Commission’s regularly scheduled meeting Monday night, and Mayor Barton Harris, consulted after the meeting, pronounced the issue dead on arrival.

“My understanding is the people that are stirring the stink have had a spat with the Brocks, and we’re not getting involved with their personal problems,” he said.

The mayor reiterated the city’s policy of charging for building permits based on the builder’s good-faith cost estimate. “We charge by what people tell us it will cost them to build it. We don’t set their price,” he said. “They paid for $95,000. Yeah, I’ll agree it’s probably going to cost more than that to build it, but the city also holds the option that we don’t have to charge anything.”

 “Of course,” added Harris thoughtfully, “we’ll always take every dime that anybody will give us.” 

But at this point, he said, the city has no plans to pursue additional dimes in this matter of the Brock building permit. “We’re there over and over and over making sure it’s done right, and it’s going to be a real asset to the community,” he said.