NORTON - A public auction raised about $132,000 for the town's capital improvements and returned more than a dozen properties to the tax rolls.

"I think, overall, for what we had, it was a good sale," Collector-Treasurer Jacqueline Boudreau said Monday. "The buyers all seemed pretty happy."

Norton offered about 25 acres of foreclosed land last Thursday at the public auction in the Yelle Elementary School cafeteria.

The town sold 14 of the 19 listings, Boudreau said. Two of the sold listings were multiple parcels of less than an acre, she said: three on Barberry/Azalea Road, and two on Azalea.

The nearly 50 registered bidders largely were residents who acquired abutting property for privacy, a buffer zone or possibly to increase their investment, said Paul Zekos, president of auctioneer the Zekos Group. "The town was quite pleased (with the auction) because they were able to generate quite a bit of one-time revenue and also were able to restore a bunch of these parcels back to the tax rolls," Zekos said. The top bid was $42,000 for about 2.5 residential acres on Eddy Street with approximately 300 feet of frontage, he said.

The parcels that didn't sell were: 1.56 acres of commercial land with more than 200 feet of frontage on Smith Street, 0.09 acres on Alder Road, 0.08 acres on Woodbine Road, 0.07 acres on Laurel Road and 0.34 acres on Robin Circle.

Zekos said town officials probably will look at potential reuses of the Smith Street site to make it more appealing at a future auction.

The town raised about $550,000 at its last public auction in 2006.