NOTE (8:24 am): This story has been updated to reflect the correct name of the state forest adjacent to Great Quarter Road.

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The Board of Selectmen at its March 16 meeting accepted three tax delinquent properties as open space, part of a larger effort to get properties with long tax delinquencies either paid up or otherwise made good with the town.

The properties, 3 Old Hawleyville Road and 15 Old Hawleyville Road, and 203 Great Quarter Road, were all accepted as open space in lieu of back taxes.

Steve Maguire, a senior land use enforcement officer, noted the property owner for 3 and 15 Old Hawleyville had "not paid taxes in quite a few years" and they were part of an inherited estate.

Maguire said 3 Old Hawleyville Road is .5 acres and 15 Old Hawleyville Road is 3.75 acres, and between the two there was $9,000 in back taxes. The properties paid roughly $1,000 in taxes per year between them. Neither property is buildable due to wetlands and rough topography, and the family that inherited the properties had no interest in them.

The town is not expected to spend much on the properties, mainly putting up a sign noting them as open space, and maybe in the future a gravel pad for parking so the public can use the property for recreation and fishing.

"I think it's a good benefit for the town," said Maguire.

The third property is a "straight up donation where the inheritor doesn't owe back taxes and just wants to sell the property," said Maguire. It is "postage stamp sized," land locked (no driveway access to a road because it is surrounded by other properties owned by others), and bordering other town owned property as well as Lower Paugussett State Forest.

The property is worth roughly $1,900 and pays about $35 a year in taxes.

"We have a mosaic of these properties along with the Newtown Forest Association in that area," said Maguire. "Lot by lot they’re .1 acres, .2 acres, but in aggregate there may be 20-plus acres."

Land Use Director Rob Sibley said that the properties were part of a continuing effort by the department since 2000, with the tax assessor, to identify properties in town that are not paying taxes and "bring that black hole of what the town is not receiving into the care and custody of open space or bring them back as taxable properties."

"Quietly, year by year, that's what began to happen," said Sibley.

All three properties were accepted unanimously by selectmen.

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Editor Jim Taylor can be reached at jim@thebee.com.