Collecting unpaid property taxes will be a priority for Wiscasset selectmen over the coming months. Reducing the backload of unpaid taxes topped a list of goals selectmen discussed Tuesday night.

“We need to start looking at back taxes, those property owners that are in arrears,” Chairman Judy Colby said. “It doesn’t help us on our own bottom line to ignore these.” She suggested starting with the oldest accounts.

Last fall selectmen started the lien process on vacant landowners for back taxes, with limited success. “Other communities don’t carry the number of liens that we do,” Selectman Judy Flanagan said.

Colby said after a foreclosure notice goes out people tend to take the town more seriously. She said she doesn’t want to take anyone’s home away but added it was a question of fairness. “Those who are paying their property taxes are in effect subsidizing the ones that aren’t.”

Selectman David Cherry was in full support. “It was something I was pushing for last year.”

Colby asked if the board wanted to proceed with the foreclosure proceedings on Mason Station. “If we go forward with this then we could be faced with the cost of having to clean up the property,” she said. Town Manager Marian Anderson said selectmen could proceed with the foreclosure without taking possession of the building and property.

“Let’s start with the foreclosure process and go after the five or six pieces of property they just paid money on,” Selectman Jeff Slack suggested.

The town office recently received $46,998 in back taxes from Mason Station LLC of Greenwich, Connecticut, leaving a balance due of $260,409. Anderson said legal counsel had advised the town could continue with the foreclosure process in spite of the payment.

Flanagan said before going further with the lien process she’d prefer to hear from the town attorney again. Neither Slack nor Rines felt another meeting with the attorney was necessary.

“If we do decide to have the attorney here, I’d prefer to have the meeting with him in open session,” Rines said. Anderson will schedule the open session with the attorney for 5 p.m., Sept. 20, in the hearing room.

In other goals, selectmen will review fees, including ones for shellfish licenses, building permits, concealed weapon permits and dog licenses.

Flanagan said the board should take a hard look at its departmental and infrastructural needs. She said the board could start by having the public works director develop a capital improvement plan for roads and streets. That prompted Rines to comment that many of the town’s roads were in “horrible shape.”

Colby suggested the board might consider taking out a bond for road work along with purchasing needed emergency or highway vehicles and equipment.

EMS Director Toby Martin said the older of the town’s two ambulances was a 2003 with over 120,000 miles. Sooner or later it will need to be replaced, he said. “Bonding is the way to go to get you back to where you’ve got be,” he added.

Treasurer Shari Fredette said if selectmen were thinking about a bond now was the time to borrow because the interest rates would likely never be lower.

Rines wasn’t in favor of borrowing more money. Running up additional debt wasn’t a good way of doing town business, he said.

“The way we’re doing it today is like robbing Peter to pay Paul,” Cherry responded.

Slack noted the town was supposed to be earmarking $40,000 each year in reserve for the purchase of a fire truck, although no money had been put in the account.

Selectmen hope to revive the tradition of giving the Boston Post Cane to the town’s oldest resident, and proceed with plans for restoring remains of the Hesper and Luther Little, the last of the four-masted schooners.

The board may also look into combining the fire and EMS departments, and discuss the fate of the fire department’s ladder truck. 

Selectmen approved a catering permit for Tony Bickford of the Little Village Bistro to cater Wiscasset Public Library’s “Bands for Books” fundraiser Sept. 4.