EAST MILLINOCKET – The town is among the first in the Katahdin region to join an Internet service that allows residents to re-register motor vehicles online, town officials said Thursday.

The Rapid Renewal service also allows residents to pay their excise tax and registration fees by going to www.SOSonline.org.

The service, Town Clerk Laura Ferguson said, will allow residents to avoid going to the town offices to re-register vehicles, although town workers still will do re-registrations for those who opt not to use the Web site.

“If someone does a registration from home, they get a printout from their computers that shows this, and that a police officer will accept,” Ferguson said Thursday. “Within a week they should also get their motor vehicle [registration] stickers.

“We still have to do first-time or new registrations here,” she added. “There’s too much paperwork that has to be done here for that.”

As of Thursday, the Web site listed 74 state towns and cities that use the re-registration service, including Augusta, Bangor, Brewer, Patten, Portland, South Portland and Veazie. Millinocket officials have discussed using the service, but no moves have been made yet.

“A lot of towns are doing it,” Administrative Assistant Shirley Tapley said. “We adopted it last year, but it’s just going into place right now. We did some trial runs on it to make sure that the money [for registration] was deposited in our account, and everything worked out fine.”

Only residents whose municipalities have enrolled in the program can use the re-registration program, Ferguson said.

The town’s Web site, www.eastmillinocket.org, also is being revamped, Tapley said. The redesign is almost finished, although some features have yet to be added.

Ray Fraser of Fraser’s Trading Post & Taxidermy of Patten is revamping it. The Board of Selectmen voted 4-0 earlier this month to follow Fraser’s suggestion and switch site hosts from midmaine.com to Network Solutions of California. The switch will cost the town $119.50, an annual savings of $275, he said.

A member of the new town economic development committee formed through the Millinocket Area Growth and Investment Council, Fraser and other committee members talked about reviving the site during a recent committee meeting.

The site was developed initially by Schenck High School’s Advanced Computer Applications Class, but had remained dormant for a long time.