At a hastily convened Emergency Select Board meeting held this afternoon at 5:00 PM at the Whitefield fire station, the Whitefield Select Board voted 3-0 to waive the pending automatic foreclosure of property belonging to Aquafortis Associates LLC. Present at the meeting were Select Board members Tony Marple, Dennis Merrill, and Frank Ober, and Town Clerk Aaron Miller. There were only 5 people in the audience including Paul Kelley of Pleasant Pond Mill LLC.

The tax liens were for non-payment of 2013 Whitefield property taxes on two lots of land belonging to Aquafortis Associates: the Clary Mill property (and mill building) on the west side of the road (tax map 17 lot 004A) with a lien on it in the amount of $752.64 and the approximately 1 acre of land on the east side of the road adjoining the Clary Lake dam on the south (map 17 lot 055B) with a lien on it in the amount of $595.40. The total amount due for both properties was $1348.04. The automatic foreclosures were set to take effect at 3 PM tomorrow afternoon. Aquafortis Associates also owns the red building sitting on the Clary Lake dam but the taxes on that have been fully paid. Tax maps and property assessment data are available on the Town of Whitefield website.

There was little discussion and the meeting was over almost before it started. The Selectmen did not give any reason for their decision to waive automatic foreclosure of the Aquafortis Associates properties other than to state that they were acting on the advice of the Town’s attorney, Mary Denison of Lake & Denison LLP in Winthrop Maine.

The selectmen had previously voted at a regularly scheduled Select Board meeting a few weeks ago to waive automatic foreclosure of the Clary Lake dam property belonging to Pleasant Pond Mill LLC, also for non-payment of 2013 property taxes. That tax lien was for $208.10.

There are outstanding tax liens on PPM and AQF properties for non-payment of the 2014 taxes. Those liens will go to automatic foreclosure in about a year if the taxes are not paid.