By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- The town board is looking at ways to deal with blighted properties.

At the Wednesday meeting, Supervisor Joe Gray asked the board members to “drive around town and make a list of properties you consider blighted, that should be fixed, repaired, see if you can somehow improve this.”

Councilmen Tom Miller and Samuel Carbone said they would look at the blight code the village recently passed and report back.

“Why reinvent the wheel. Let’s look at the village’s blighted policy and go from there,” Miller said.

Gray said he wants to at least have a list of blighted lots so they can go after grants “when a funding opportunity is available.”

“We’re talking about replacing ‘welcome to Massena’ signs and one of them sits next to a gas station that’s a huge eyesore,” Gray said, referring to state Route 420 south of the village. “It seems if we’re going to replace the signs, it would be nice to have them in a setting that’s as attractive as possible.”