OXFORD – Selectmen voted unanimously Thursday to look into developing an ordinance to regulate roadside sales and having the fire chief appointed by the town manager instead of elected by voters.

Town Manager Michael Chammings said he will look into creating a peddler’s law and suggested that it may be modeled after one in Yarmouth. The ordinance will go before voters at the annual town meeting.

Chammings said the ordinance would require peddlers to pay $50 to the town to get a permit to sell at the roadside and submit to a background check by police.

The Yarmouth ordinance stipulates these same conditions, and states that violators may be fined up to $100.

Gayle Smedberg, co-owner of Smedberg’s Crystal Spring Farm on Route 26, said Friday that she asked the town to look into an ordinance after noticing people from out of town and out of state who sold items off the town’s roads.

“I just think that they come into an area and take money from here and they don’t help local people at all,” she said. “They don’t hire people from this area, they don’t do any community service.”

Smedberg added that such peddlers don’t pay local taxes or fill out paperwork required to run a local business.

Scott Hill, co-owner of Call of the Wild RV Center on Route 26, said he agreed with the idea. Hill said peddlers often come in during the popular TD Banknorth 250 at the Oxford Plains Speedway and undercut local business.

“Basically anyone can come in and set up a booth and start selling off the street,” Hill said Friday. “They shouldn’t be able to do that when an established business is there selling the same products.”

Selectmen also voted to put an item on the town meeting warrant to consider having the town’s fire chief be appointed rather than elected. Chammings said the town manager would appoint the chief and the board would approve the appointment.

Chammings said Friday that appointing the fire chief would ensure that he would be qualified. He said that even if the measure passes, it might not go into effect for three years since voters at a special town meeting Thursday approved the election of the fire chief and other town officials by referendum next June.

Scott Hunter of Otisfield is in his second year of a three-year term as Oxford’s fire chief. He works as a platoon chief for the Auburn Fire Department.

Hunter said Chammings has discussed the issue with him, and he has no problem with the change as long as the town manager allows the members of the Fire Department to have some say in the selection, the person is qualified and firefighters support the choice.