By Donna M. Perry,Staff Writer

NEW SHARON – Selectmen have scheduled a special town meeting for next week to ask voters to raise money to buy 3.5 acres for a new salt and sand storage building.

Voters will also be asked to authorize selectmen to spend up to $157,782.31 from the town’s sand and salt reserve fund and to borrow up to $100,000 to construct the building.

Selectmen have been trying to buy land for several years to move the town’s salt and sand pile off of privately owned land to state-approved town-owned land. Voters rejected land-and-building proposals in the past but authorized selectman last year to do preliminary work, including looking for another piece of land.

The town meeting is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. on Thursday, July 7, at Cape Cod Hill School.

Selectmen are asking voters to consider raising $20,000 to buy 3 acres on the west side of Kimball Pond Road, which is off Cape Cod Hill Road, for the salt and sand shed, Selectman Maynard Webster said Wednesday. The land belongs to brothers Rodney Porter of New Sharon and Malcolm Porter of Farmington.

Voters have set money aside in a reserve account of about $157,000, not including interest, to build the storage facility, Webster said.

The proposed borrowing package, not to exceed $100,000, would also be used to construct the building and would be the state’s share, Webster said. The state is expected eventually to reimburse the town for 43 percent of the building’s cost, Webster said.

The Legislature put more money into a fund this year and is expected to do the same next year to reimburse towns that have built the mandated salt and sand storage buildings, he said.

Also on the warrant is a question involving donating money, received from the state for snowmobile registrations, to a new snowmobile club, the New Sharon Snow Riders Snowmobile Club, and to see if the town would raise $2,500 to support the new club’s trail system. The former club, Missing Links, has disbanded, Webster said, and declined the money at the March town meeting.