LIVERMORE — Residents will soon have a new service that will allow them to pay their property taxes from their home computers.

The Board of Selectpersons approved two new services on Dec. 12 that the Androscoggin Bank proposed to benefit the town, town administrative assistant Kurt Schaub said Thursday.

The first service approved and expected to be available within the first couple months of 2012 is AndroPay, a program that will allow Livermore residents to make tax payments from their home computers using credit and/or debit cards, or a direct debit from a checking account, he said. 

Accompanying this service will be the town office employees’ ability to scan checks presented at the town office for immediate deposit into the town’s bank account, Schaub said.

The money will be taken right from the resident’s account. Checks will no longer have to be delivered to the bank, he said, so the only in-person deposits will be for any cash collected, which is relatively minimal, he said. 

The pay-at-home service will eventually link into a town website and the ability to take credit and debit cards here at the office, Schaub said. 

A taxpayer using this service will pay a convenience fee, which is fully disclosed, and the town will receive the total amount of the payment, he said.

A direct payment from a checking account will cost the user a flat fee of $1.

The fees for debit and credit vary depending on the amount of the payment made, he said. There is no charge to the town for this service. 

The second new service will assist the town in bad check collection. 

“We are usually able to resolve bad check issues with a phone call, but, like any business, occasionally we get stuck,” Schaub said. “A recent experience resulted in our turning the matter over to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, after phone calls and a follow-up letter failed to produce results. The resident’s car registration was canceled.”

Androscoggin’s program will make the town whole when they collect, and there is no charge to the town. The writer of a check with insufficient funds will pay $35, Schaub said. 

“We will be given the option whether to handle the matter ourselves, as we know most of our customers, or to turn it over,” he said. “We will be provided with signage to disclose the consequences of writing a bad check.”

Schaub said he will meet with the installers of the program after the first of the year to begin work on the project.

“We want to make sure it is up and running and functional so people can take advantage of it for the April tax payment,” he said.

The plan to get a town website is to put money for it in the 2012-13 budget.

The website has to be easy to maintain and easy for people to use, Schaub said.

dperry@sunjournal.com