MEXICO — Selectmen set a special town meeting to act on three money articles for 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 6. It will be followed by a board meeting to set the tax rate.

The decision came during a nearly three-hour selectmen’s meeting Tuesday night where a petition asking for repairs to the Poplar Hill Road was presented.

Town Manager John Madigan said Bonnie Bouchard presented a petition signed by 34 residents of the road and asking for repairs because of its poor condition.

“It is the worst road we have. There are potholes on top of potholes. But we haven’t had the money to repair it,” Madigan said Wednesday afternoon.

That might change, however, at least for repairs although not for the rebuild that it needs, because the town didn’t spend all it had budgeted for snow removal this past winter. Madigan said the highway department account turned back $72,000 of its budget to surplus.

One of the three articles on the special town meeting warrant asks residents to approve taking $50,000 from surplus for those repairs.

If approved, the work would be done sometime this fall.

A second article asks approval to use $140,000 of the Maine State Retirement System’s refund to the town to make this year’s payment on the $2 million road construction bond.

And the third asks residents to approve taking $100,000 from surplus to go toward the property tax liability.

Madigan said the board is expected to set the 2012-13 tax rate following the special town meeting.

He expects it will rise by about $2 per $1,000 valuation, from $23 to about $25.

The increase is the result of higher school taxes of about $127,000, and increased municipal expenses.

In other matters, the board set two public hearings for 6 p.m. Sept. 25.

The hearings are to gather comments on a proposal to allow all-terrain-vehicles and snowmobiles to use Carlton Avenue to connect with the trail network, and to ban parking on the left side of Cherry Street.

The board also approved purchase of a new Case backhoe at a cost of $78,700, including trade-in, and a replacement dump body for the town’s sander, at a cost of $29,000. The purchase of the dump body is contingent upon the town working out a deal to pay for the backhoe over a two-year period.