Signs for drivers, not moose

ROXBURY — New “No Parking” and speed limit signs going up on Route 120 near the Maine Department of Transportation highway sand and salt pile are for drivers — not resident moose.
At a Board of Selectmen meeting Tuesday, Selectman Mike Worthley said he got two free signs of each for a total of four and would soon install them.
At previous board meetings, selectmen learned that some drivers were stopping their cars in the middle of the curving road to gawk at moose, creating a significant traffic hazard.
Hence the need for signage.
In other business, according to minutes of the meeting, Donna Moore Hays, the assessors’ agent for selectmen acting in their other capacity as town assessors, found four new buildings in Roxbury that weren’t being taxed correctly.
To reach the properties on Lamb Road in East Roxbury, she had to drive through Carthage on Route 142.
In her June 4 letter to the board, Hays said that people who own the buildings constructed them without first getting permits, which is why they were never assessed.
Because Maine law allows three years from the last assessment date, Hays advised selectmen to assess the owners for land and building values as of April 1, 2009, and to bill supplementally for building values only, for 2007 and 2008.
One building, with a value of $22,200 had been assessed previously as a seasonal cottage, but is now used as a shed and a two-story shed, Hays said.
There was also a $3,200 addition to the cottage, which wasn’t previously assessed; and two formerly assessed vacant lots now have buildings on them valued at $35,400 and $17,000, she said.
Hays recommended that town planners investigate the lot separation as a possible illegal subdivision and to notify Code Enforcement Officer Richard Kent that the buildings were being worked on without required permits.
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