To keep maintenance of town-owned buildings from falling between the cracks, the budget for the new fiscal year in Sebago will include money set aside for future repairs.

“We have to think to the future for what happens when this thing needs a new roof or we have a big storm that tears the roof off,” said Interim Town Manager Jim Smith, adding that how much will be budgeted for capital improvements and whether it will be set aside for particular buildings is still up in the air.

Smith said there is currently no money in the town’s budget to address anything other than minor maintenance of the town’s seven buildings. If a building needed something major, such as a new roof, the money would have to be approved at a special town meeting. Though the public works budget includes money for repairs, it wouldn’t cover major projects.

The town owns seven buildings – the public works building, sand and salt shed, Emergency Medical Services building, three fire stations, the new municipal office building, the old Town Hall, the historical society building and the town garage. Some of the buildings in need of work, include two of the town’s three fire stations, Smith said, adding that the new municipal office building will likely need a new roof in two to three years, as well.

A fire station committee started work in 2003 to assess the current and future needs of the town’s fire and rescue buildings, finishing up with a series of recommendations presented to selectmen this summer. No action has been taken yet on these recommendations, though Allen Crabtree, chairman of the selectmen, said he hoped to reinstate a committee early in 2009.

When the committee presented recommendations to build a public safety building on town land off Route 114 in 2007, voters approved spending $40,000 to hire an architectural design and engineering firm. The firm submitted a design for a five-bay station costing more than $2.4 million. The committee and the selectmen rejected this proposal as too costly.

Officials haven’t talked about getting rid of any buildings except for the town garage, which is used for storage and is poorly located near the Town Hall instead of near the public works building, Smith said.