I had just accompanied Bill Gray to an Asbury Park apartment house where frustrated residents complained in heated English and Spanish about the legions of "cucarachas" infesting their homes.

"I'm tired of waking up at night with cockroaches running across my face!", exclaimed one angry man.

That did it for me. I headed for the back door, scrambling over a precarious pile of building materials blocking the back steps.

If there's anyone who has "seen it all" in Asbury Park, it's probably Bill Gray, head of the city's Code Enforcement Department, and his crew of four inspectors -- Nalin Carney, Patricia Donovan, Howard Pogorsky and Madeline Ricks -- with support from senior clerk Roberta Holt and part-time clerk Tamica Smith.

"I always wear light pants, so I can see roaches and fleas," advised Gray, as I ruled out "city housing inspector" as a possible career option. "Sometimes my wife makes me change clothes in the garage."

For the past two hours, we had been crisscrossing Asbury Park in Gray's sweltering, un-air-conditioned city car, a hand-me-down from the police department. It was apparent that Gray knows Asbury Park better than most people who were born here.

As we navigated the city streets, he pointed out continuing sore spots. Overgrown, trash-strewn lots bordering neatly kept homes. Abandoned houses with boarded-up windows and broken-down fences. A decrepit apartment from which Gray had recently evicted an amazing number of people and pets.

Gray and his inspectors have their supporters and their detractors, but no one would claim it's an easy job. During the course of our afternoon ride, we intercepted three apparent drug deals. One person approached us, ready to make an offer. One cursed at us and retreated into a house, and another took flight with a wad of bills in his hand.

A potential danger is that unarmed housing inspectors, cruising the streets in search of violations, will be mistaken for either drug buyers or undercover police officers. And inspectors never know what they will find when they enter a building, either in the form of unruly occupants, unrestrained dogs, or hazardous conditions like weakened floors.

The city does not yet provide them with portable radios or phones to summon help, so inspectors routinely carry their personal cell phones.

In addition to inspecting all commercial properties, houses and apartments that are being sold or newly rented, the department conducts state inspections on all residential properties containing over three units every five years. (Over 11,000 inspection visits were made in a recent year.) Code Enforcement also handles citizen complaints about everything from overcrowded apartments to overgrown grass.

First-time offenders typically get a violations notice, which must be delivered to them in person or by certified mail. If the problem isn't corrected in a specified time period, the inspector can issue a formal summons, meaning that both the offender and the inspector must appear in court.

In a recent month, the department issued 66 summonses, but Gray noted that most people fix the problem before their court date. He said that Code Enforcement typically writes as many summonses to wayward tenants as they do to problem owners.

Dead ends often occur, however, when the property is owned by an out-of-state landlord, a deceased individual, or a corporation where no individual names are listed on the tax rolls. Summonses sent to post office boxes are frequently returned with an "addressee unknown" stamp, and some owners don't record their deeds, making it harder to track them down or hold them responsible for code violations. Other property owners delay or ignore court dates, especially out-of-state offenders.

Gray's department can ask the Public Works Department to mow overgrown lots and send the errant owners a bill (if they can find them), but Public Works doesn't have sufficient staff to handle all the problem lots -- particularly in the wake of the "property flipping" scandal of 1997 that resulted in so many abandoned properties.

Still, Gray is extremely upbeat about what he sees. On our recent ride through Asbury Park, he cheerfully pointed out example after example of what he called "little victories" all around the city: a burned-out house that was being beautifully restored, a once neglected rental home with new paint and a new porch, decrepit residences that were being proudly restored by new owners.

He also pointed to larger restorations, like the buildings housing Wanna Window and the Treasure Island storage facility on Memorial Drive. And, of course, the Cookman Avenue business district is alive with restorations stretching from Main Street to the former Steinbach's department store.

"The number of building permits issued in town is up significantly, and you couldn't drive down a street this summer without seeing people fixing up homes," he said. "You didn't see that five or six years ago. It's much, much better than when I came here in 1993."

And the city is addressing its remaining problems head-on. This summer, Asbury Park auctioned off over a dozen properties on which it had foreclosed, and two dozen undersized lots were recently offered for sale to contiguous property owners. Most significantly, Assistant City Manager James Famularo has identified over 100 privately owned, neglected properties, and the Planning Board and city council will be asked to declare them part of a special "scattered site" redevelopment zone to hasten their rehabilitation. (More about this in a future column.)

In the short term, the Monmouth County Sheriff's Office has also agreed to send in prison work parties to help clean unruly lots in the coming weeks.

What enhancements would most help Code Enforcement do its job? High on all the inspectors' lists are a new computer system to streamline the back-breaking paperwork required by the state and hand-held computers to let inspectors record data electronically in the field.

State experts definitely agree. A recent state audit concluded that "the biggest obstacle facing the director is antiquated systems technology". In fact, state auditors believe that an updated system could free up the equivalent of two full inspectors each year.

Given our no-frills city budget, the price for this technology is fairly daunting -- about $72,000 for the complete hardware and software package -- but the returns could outweigh the costs in lost inspection time. And it would surely provide some relief for department clerk Roberta Holt who, all the inspectors emphatically agreed, should have the word "saint" inserted before her name.

Code Enforcement is located on the second floor of city hall at the north end. Office hours are Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and you can contact them by calling city hall at 775-2100.