Wiscasset firefighters plan to circulate a petition calling for residents to decide if department members can wash their personal vehicles at the station, Fire Chief T.J. Merry confirmed Friday.

Merry said the wording was not yet set, but that the petition will request a town vote on the issue. He checked with the town office and was told a petition would need 179 signatures, he said. He doesn’t think it will take long to reach that number, he added.

Firefighters will likely seek the signatures one weekend morning around town, at the Wiscasset Community Center and elsewhere, Merry said.

Members feel very strongly that they should be able to wash their vehicles, as Wiscasset firefighters have been doing for about 60 years, the chief said. Selectmen barred the practice earlier this year and, in split votes, have upheld the decision.

A pair of legal opinions recommended against allowing the practice, due to liability, town officials have said.

At one selectmen’s meeting, then-board chairman Ben Rines Jr. raised the idea of a petition as an option for firefighters; that suggestion was the basis for the planned petition drive, Merry said.

Rines has been one of the dissenters in the board’s latest majority votes for the washing ban.

Commenting on the petition in a phone interview Saturday, Rines, still a board member but no longer chairman, said: “I look forward to signing it, as a citizen of Wiscasset.”

Reached Friday evening, the board’s new chairman, Judy Colby, said it was the first she had heard about the petition. “If they get the signatures, I would support it going to the town and let the townspeople decide,” Colby said. “That’s part of the democratic process.”

It would be the selectmen’s role to make sure the townspeople are aware of the liability the town would face if the vehicle-washing continued, Colby added. “Nothing has happened, but you never know.”

Officials, including Merry on Friday, have said no Wiscasset firefighters have gotten hurt washing their vehicles at the station.

“Every time we walk in the building, it’s a liability,” Merry said in Friday’s interview. If the petition is successful, he said he would support a special town meeting being called for the vote.