It can be good if permissions are added so you can control the area where a player can move and interact with items. this can prevent people that are in your town from stealing from you.
If you're a mayor and you want to do so, stand in a chunk and do /plot fs <$> (can be zero). This puts the plot up for sale.
Then, ask your town resident to do /plot claim. Now that chunks is theirs.
Of course, as a mayor, you can do /plot evict to remove their ownership.
While doing that, you can also turn off resident perms by doing /t set perm resident (on/off).
If you want to be specific, you can do /t set perm resident (build/destroy/switch/itemuse) (on/off).
This way, you can disable resident perm all over the town (so they can't steal stuff) while also allow them to have their own chunks to work on.