Rep. Larry Satowitz introduces bill to let towns take, clean chronic salvage and junk properties

Representative Larry Satowitz, of Randolph, introduced H72 to the House Government Operations & Military Affairs committee as a tool for municipalities to address long-running salvage and scrap accumulation on private properties.

Satowitz said the bill would allow a town, in very rare cases where other remedies have failed, to use a process analogous to a tax sale to take possession of a parcel, clean it up, and put it to productive use. "If municipalities had tools that work really well, we'd have a lot fewer of them," Satowitz said, describing a property in Randolph that has sat in a deteriorated state for "at least 8 or 10 years" despite repeated town efforts to compel cleanup.

The bill is framed as a…