WATERVILLE — City councilors on Tuesday will discuss what to do with seven properties the city foreclosed on because the owners did not pay their taxes. Seven is the highest number of foreclosed properties the city has dealt with at the same time in recent memory, officials said.
A total of four tenants still live in three of the houses, so the city for the first time will be a rent-collecting landlord, although city officials hope to list the properties with a real estate broker and sell them, according to City Manager Michael Roy.
“We do everything we possibly can, leading up to foreclosure, to assist people in trying to make their tax payments so we don’t get into this situation because we’re not built to be landlords and we don’t have systems in place and people hired that can take it on,” Roy said Monday. “How do you pay rent and how do you take care of the electrical, plumbing and heating problems?”
The properties were foreclosed on Feb. 12 and property owners were given a 30-day redemption period after that, according to Tax Collector Linda Cote.
City Assessor Paul Castonguay, who has worked for the city for nearly 21 years, said he does not recall the city having as many as seven foreclosed properties at once. Roy has been city manager 11 years, and Cote has been with the city 10 years and both said this is the highest number of foreclosures in memory.
The total amount owed on the properties is $49,800 and includes three years worth of taxes, Cote said.
Every year, Cote talks to property owners who have not paid taxes and sends out notices, but the seven owners did not pay up.
“I don’t have any leeway and I don’t want to make it sound like I’m rigid, but I have dates that have to be adhered to,” Cote said Monday.
The three properties where people still live are 9 Abbott St., a two-family building; 8 Broad St., a single-family home; and 8 Grove St., a two-family house. City officials hope to sell those and a single-family house at 5 Kimball St.
Roy said the tenant on Grove Street told him the landlord walked away from the property and the tenant has been paying the electric and heating bills, but not rent, since the owner left. That tenant says he plans to move in June, according to Cote.
The other foreclosed properties are at 26 Gold St., where the city demolished a dilapidated vacant apartment building whose owners kept changing as taxes became due and Roy said the city plans to offer the vacant lot to abutters; 75 Airport Road, also a vacant lot the city plans to sell as part of six adjacent city-owned lots in the Airport Business Park; and 19 Summer St., a two-family building the city hopes to demolish and then offer the land to abutters. That building is in poor condition but the other homes are salvageable, Roy said.
Councilors initially were scheduled to vote Tuesday on disposing of the foreclosed properties, but Roy said he plans to ask them to postpone that until the April 19 meeting to allow time to tie up some loose ends.
A city ordinance requires the city to offer foreclosed vacant lots for sale to abutters first, Roy said.
The city also plans to speak with the Waterville Community Land Trust about at least one property that the nonprofit organization is interested in, he said.
Cote said the foreclosures were the result of unpaid taxes that were due on the properties from 2013 to 2016. All the owners live in Maine, according to Cote.
While the tenant in the Grove Street building knew the owner had left, tenants in some of the houses had no idea the buildings were being foreclosed on when she spoke to them, Cote said.
The man who owned the Abbott Street building said he did not have the money to pay the taxes because he also had taxes to pay in another town, Cote said. A woman who owned the Kimball Street building told Cote she had no money and the bank had paid the taxes on the property the last two or three years, and the owner of the land on Airport Road came in to Cote’s office and spoke with her, but never came back or called, she said.
In a separate matter, councilors on Tuesday are scheduled to vote on abating $9,817 in personal property taxes on 26 properties for various reasons, including that owners went out of business, went bankrupt, moved out of the area, were assessed in error or were unable to pay taxes for other reasons. The city has deemed the taxes non-collectible. Roy said the city abates such taxes each year after making a best effort to collect them.
The list has decreased in the last several years because of Cote’s persistence in getting in touch with those responsible and seeing that the taxes are paid, according to Roy. She said that in cases where the property owner can not get to City Hall to pay the taxes, she goes and collects them.
Castonguay, the city assessor, said there are 5,400 real estate properties in the city and a total of 6,330 with real estate and personal property.
This year, the city hopes to collect $16 million in real estate taxes and $1.65 million in personal property taxes, he said.
Amy Calder — 861-9247
Twitter: @AmyCalder17
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.