‘Town owns this mess': Neighbors call on town to clean up rat-infested York property

YORK, Maine — An infestation of rats and piles of trash have neighbors irked near 21 Darcy Road, calling on the Selectboard to clean up the town-owned property.

The home was seized by the town in 2020 due to lack of payment on taxes, according to town records, then burned in a fire in February. Now boarded up, residents say the buildup of garbage on the lawn and inside the building has pests running amok.

“Some neighbors are keeping their children in the house due to this. Others are paying for pest services,” neighbor Janet Duggan wrote in a letter to the Selectboard read during Monday night’s meeting. She wrote the yard had a mattress, furniture, masks and water bottles scattered about, calling on the board to take action as soon as possible.

“The grass continues to grow, the trash smells and our requests go unanswered,” Duggan wrote. “The town owns this house. The town owns this mess. It is a reasonable expectation that the town should accept responsibility and at the very least clean this property immediately.”

Selectboard members gave no push back Monday night to Duggan’s letter, which was one of two written to the board by neighbors.

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The board voted 5-0 to have Code Enforcement Officer Amber Harrison oversee the cleanup of the property, including pest control. They also took a vote to sell the property with the stipulation the buyer acquire a building permit to demolish the structure.

Harrison said she plans to hire a pest control service and workers in hazmat suits to conduct a cleanup of the site. To address the attraction of animals to the property, she said the inside will need to be cleaned as well, based on a recent conversation with a pest control worker.

“He felt because of the amount of materials in the building, that had been stockpiling for several years, there’s still a food source there,” Harrison said.

Home was vacated after February fire

The previous owner of the home, Mary Gibson, continued to live inside the home even after it was taken by the town in 2020. She lived there until the fire, from which she escaped, and was then helped by the Red Cross in finding new housing.

Town Manager Steve Burns said the town of York does not evict people who have their homes taken by the town. He said when he first began working in York, some people had been living in their homes for over 20 years without paying taxes.

“Either they die or move out of town or give up or whatever, then the town sells it, gets its money back,” Burns said.

Burns said any costs of the cleanup incurred by the town will be reimbursed by the sale of the property, while the rest of the money from the sale will go to Gibson, minus the taxes owed.

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Does the town need to do more?

Selectboard members expressed concern Monday that the town let the home go into disrepair.  However, Burns and Harrison said they forwarded one of the letters read Monday night to the board as early as March 24.

Duggan wrote the home was in disrepair even before the fire.

The colonial-style two-story home, built in 1980, had a damaged roof that caused water to leak inside the home, according to Duggan. She wrote her family was aware of the Gibson’s situation and helped her with property upkeep, including mowing the lawn, raking the leaves and plowing the driveway.

“We continued to advocate for our neighbor. With her limited mobility, the house was simply not safe for her to live in,” Duggan wrote. She added that they pushed for the town to address the leaky roof with a tarp.

“Other than tarping the roof, the town did not help,” Duggan wrote.

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Board member Mike Estes said he believed the fire could have been prevented if the board had learned about the condition of the home sooner.

“When the neighbors tell us that water’s running down through the roof and shorting out electrical stuff, I can’t think of any selectmen here that would ignore that,” Estes said.

He requested Harrison update them on the conditions of the homes owned by the town of York where people are still living. Harrison said she would report back to the board this summer, saying there were about 20 different properties.

Selectboard Chairman Todd Frederick said Tuesday the formal title of selectman includes “overseer of the poor.” He said part of the duty of the board is to ensure that properties like the one at 21 Darcy Road do not fall into such disrepair when people continue to live there.

“The town is the owner of that property, needs to secure and maintain that property,” Frederick said. “It shouldn’t be left in the condition that it was left in.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Neighbors call on town to clean up its rat-infested home in York, Maine