MINOT – Selectmen this week voted to increase building permit fees by 10 cents per square foot for houses and garages.

Town Administrator Rhonda Irish said she had asked Code Enforcement Officer Ken Pratt to determine whether existing fees brought in enough to pay for his salary and expenses.

The intent, Irish noted, is to have a code enforcement office entirely paid for by fees charged for services performed.

“Otherwise, payment for those services come out of general funds,” Irish said.

Selectman Dean Campbell said he had no problem with the fee increase.

“Those fees haven’t gone up in the four years I’ve been on the board,” Campbell said.

The new building permit fee for a house is $50 plus 25 cents a square foot, and the fee for a garage goes from 10 to 20 cents per square foot.

Selectman Steve French told the board that recommendations on how Androscoggin County emergency services are dispatched will be made public at a meeting later this week.

It appears, French said, that it comes down to whether there will be one Public Safety Answering Point covering the entire county or two, one for Lewiston/Auburn 911 calls and a second, operated by the sheriff’s office, for the rest of the county.

“It’s not a bad thing to combine, but I don’t know why we should. It will cost a lot more and I don’t see that we have anything to gain,” French said.

Minot’s costs for dispatch services through the sheriff’s office is $2,000 a year, and that would likely rise about $500 under the two answering points scenario.

However, French said, early estimates show that with a single answering point serving the county, Minot’s cost would rise from $2,000 to $18,000, initially, and then drop to about $13,000.

In other business, Road Manager Arlan Saunders told selectmen that the winter sand pile is up to $5.84 per yard, including sand, salt, labor, trucks and equipment, with the sand in place.

Saunders also said he had consulted with the Maine Warden Service about the Shaw Hill Road beaver problem and had been referred to the same person who had trapped the beaver on Marston Hill Road last summer.

Resident Susan Geismar asked selectmen to alert Minot drivers who might use Route 119 through Hebron that this week the Oxford County Sheriff’s Office will initiate an enforcement program in the vicinity of the Hebron Academy campus. Initially, the deputies will be distributing informational material but then will follow with a period of “zero tolerance” enforcement.