SOUTH PORTLAND — The South Portland Planning Board has reviewed a
list of 46 city-owned lots, taken for back taxes between 1923 and 2009, and
will recommend to the City Council that nearly half of them, totaling 4.99
acres, be put out to public bid.
The board will urge councilors to keep 24 lots totaling
5.78 acres, including seven properties pulled from the sell list following
testimony by abutting landowners at the July 24 Planning Board meeting.
According to Community Planner Steve Puleo, the
council could rule on dispensation for all 46 properties as soon as its Aug. 20
meeting.
The lots recommend for sale have a total
assessed value of $544,400 – ranging from $75,400 for a 2.22-acre lot at 35
Southeast Road that could be subdivided into nine individual house lots to
$2,600 for a small patch measuring 1,525 square feet at 68 Hillcrest Ave.
That lot, like many smaller properties on the
list – one of which measures just 50 square feet – is used by abutting
landowners as an extension of their own lawn.
“In many cases, those people may be surprised to
learn they do no actually own that land,” said City Planner Tex Haeuser.
More surprising might be what comes if these
residents refuse a city offer to buy the land – an eviction notice.
“If an abutter is using it and does not wish to
purchase [the property], he should be notified that he is trespassing,” wrote Code
Enforcement Officer Pat Doucette of the Hillcrest Avenue lot, a notice she
repeated several times in her guidance to the Planning Board. Assistant City
Manager Erik Carson, who also serves as South Portland’s economic development
director, also weighed in with advice to the Planning Board, as did the
Department of Water Resource Protection and the Conservation Commission.
Although the city finance department provides
the Planning Board with a list of tax-acquired property each year, the board
has not formally reviewed the inventory of city-owned lots since 2001. According
to Puleo, some of the 46 lots have not been looked at since 1981.
City Manager Jim Gailey said extra revenue in
tough economic times was not on his mind when he asked the board to review the
properties this past spring. Instead, he said in May, it was simply time to do
a bit of housekeeping.
Although many of the lots have fences, sheds and
other encroachments built on them by abutters – leading to Doucette’s concern –
only two have actual buildings. That’s because, unlike the apartment building
at 357 Broadway recently foreclosed on by the city, few of the 46 lots reviewed
by the Planning Board were ever occupied.
Many, explained Puleo, are the final lots in subdivisions,
which, after failing to sell, eventually ended up in city hands when developers
walked away from them. Others are on unbuilt streets in those subdivisions
– so-called “paper roads” – that could become lots of record with minimal
intervention. Other lots were automatically acquired after being abandoned by
the estates of deceased residents.
“It’s a case where none of the decedents wanted
it, it never got sold, the estate never paid the taxes, and, eventually, it
fell to the city,” said Puleo.
There is no particular pattern to the lots, in
either size or location.
“They’re all over the city, really,” said Puleo.
“What people don’t always understand is that a lot of subdivisions were laid
out and recorded that may not meet current standards, some have lots that are
only 50 feet by 100 feet, but those remain lots of record that can be built
on.”
Other lots, said Puleo, are mysteries, the
apparent leftovers of water easements and drainage swells, many of which have
belonged to the city since the 1930s and 1940s. In many cases, these lots, some
only about 10 feet wide, run between and behind houses, where they are
maintained as lawns by neighboring property owners.
Many of the lots have been on the city books
long enough that there’s little surviving memory of how they passed into public
hands. Although the list reviewed by the Planning Board described all 46 lots
as “tax-acquired,” Willard Street resident Richard Holt said the 5,550-square-foot
lot at 25 Willard St., now assessed at $118,700, was purchased by the city in
September 1943 from the Willard Welfare Association for $300. Puleo’s records
show the city took the lot for back taxes in 2002.
Holt said the lot was purchased to create a
drainage area for surrounding lots, but was “used as a dump by everyone on
Willard Street.” When his parents complained in 1947, Holt said the city
responded by putting a “No Dumping” sign on the lot. Later, in the mid-70s,
when the city built the Willard Beach parking lot on Willow Street, the vacant
lot took on even more runoff.
“I have paid dearly for that,” said Holt, who routinely mows the
property. “The back part of my property is under water now and my garage is
cracked and tilted down. I think the city has an obligation to maintain this as
a drainage area because of what they did with the parking lot.”
Another Willard Street resident, Mary Giggey, echoed Holt’s
comments.
“With environmental change, it’s more important than ever that
this lot be removed from the lost,” said Giggey, adding that the water table is
the area is “higher than at any time in the 20 years I’ve been here.”
“It would be very costly and embarrassing to the city if it comes
out that that land was misrepresented as a buildable lot, when it’s very
evident that it’s a wetland,” said Giggey. “It looks like a beautiful lot but
when you get halfway into it, it’s a bog. Every once in a while kids will try
and run through it and get up to their hips in muck.”
The Planning Board removed the Willard lot from the sell list, as
well as three at 24-R, 30 and 40 Noyes St., totaling 2.25 acres, which serve as
a buffer between area homes and the Super 8 motel on Main Street.
“We’ve had nothing but trouble with the motel for years now,”
said Elliott Randall, whose 1992 overture to buy the lots was rejected by the
city.
“We were told then that the city wanted to maintain the land as
stormwater retention,” said Randall. “But there’s so much trash between them
[the motel] and us now, including demolition debris, it’s disgusting. Anything
we can do to buffer ourselves from that is helpful.”
One property that won’t be sold is a 1.1-acre parcel at 17-R
Paddock Place. Originally meant to be playground serving the surrounding
subdivision, it was left to grow wild.
“The weeds grow up to seven feet high,” said Granby Road resident
Bret Bergst. “It does seem extremely wet to me and not a good place to build a
house, but as it is there are a lot of hazards there. I keep thinking my
daughter is going to come out of there covered in ticks with a skunk on her
leg.”
Bergst suggested that the city convert the property into a
community garden. However, Planning Board members seemed to find that unlikely.
“This board has limited powers,” said William Laidley. “We can
only make suggestions to the council.”
“You’d have a lot more control if you can acquired that land
yourselves,” said acting Chairwoman Susan Hasson, who noted conflicting
recommendations from city staff on whether to sell the property.
“Well, you could flip a coin,” offered Haeuser.
It took the Planning
Board about 90 minutes to work through the list of public lands, including
hearing resident testimony.
One lot it did not
consider was a 47th parcel including on the original list received
in May. Following the board’s first workshop on the matter, Roberts Mills Road
resident Mark Tinkham came forward to say he and another abutter, James Dow,
had purchased and split the 1,278-square-foot lot at 62 Roberts Mills Road in
2004.
“The accessor’s
records do not reflect purchase of this property,” advised Puleo. However,
Haeuser said to lot was scratched from the review list on the belief the
property was in fact already sold off.
Still, the city seems
less inclined to let go of a 2,700-square-foot corner lot at 26 Walnut St.
Abutting property owner Gregory Welch has claimed to own the own, but, said
Haeuser, “Unfortunately, we find no evidence of that.”
A CLOSER LOOK
Of 46 lots acquired by South Portland for back taxes between 1923 and 2009, the Planning Board voted July 24 to send the following 22 properties to the City Council with a recommendation that they be offered for sale.
Address Square Feet Assessed Value
35 Southeast Road 96,703 $75,400
120 Evans St. 9,120 $56,700
37 Orlando St. 5,500 $53,800
34 Daytona St. 5,500 $53,800
290 Ocean St. 5,000 $53,600
2 Rossetti Ave. 4,434 $37,500
14 Bowdoin Ave. 4,008 $33,200
25 Colonial Ave. 10,000 $30,300
11 Wylie St. 30,536 $29,900
36 Pleasant Ave. 3,441 $27,300
1 Park Ave. 1,830 $23,300
274R Pleasant Ave. 4,700 $12,800
5 Mussey St. 3,515 $8,500
26 Walnut St. 2,700 $7,400
110 School St. 4,579 $7,000
21 Dresser Road 3,572 $6,900
14 Dresser Road 2,000 $5,800
12 Holden St. 3,300 $5,400
81 Sunset Ave. 2,500 $5,400
231 Margaret St. 6,241 $3,900
228 Margaret St. 6,775 $3,900
68 Hillcrest Ave. 1,525 $2,600
TOTAL 217,479 (4.99 AC) $544,400
These 24 lots are tax-acquired properties the Planning Board will urge the City Council to retain as public property.
74 Cash St. 15,856 $128,700
9 Grove Ave. 5,663 $177,400
25 Willard St. 5,550 $118,700
31 Boothby Ave. 11,702 $68,300
183R Evans St. 10,000 $53,000
34 Roosevelt St. 5,000 $35,300
40 Noyes St. 80,150 $21,900
71 Sawyer St. 6,142 $17,800
30 Noyes St. 17,380 $16,000
17R Paddock Place 47,916 $15,000
48 Calais St. 3,720 $13,700
780 Sawyer St. 12,676 $7,900
128 Jordan Ave. 4,560 $7,700
24R Noyes Road 1,278 $3,900
9 Romano Road 2,070 $3,000
14 Brigham St. 2,047 $2,800
1932 Broadway 2,460 $2,700
45 Norman St. 10,200 $1,900
35 Norman St. 5,000 $1,800
20 Chestnut St. 1,176 $1,200
115 Simmons Road 250 $700
176 Sawyer St. 497 $600
58 Skillings St. 316 $400
2 Glendale Rd. 50 $100
TOTAL 251,659 (5.78 AC) $700,500
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