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At a special meeting scheduled for 7 p.m., Wednesday, the board will take public comment and then vote on an ordinance allowing the town to purchase the farm as part of a settlement agreement with David Moxley.

Moxley filed a $16 million discrimination lawsuit against the town in 2008, alleging that officials blocked the sale of his 224-acre farm off of Md. Route 194 to a Muslim group because of an anti-Muslim bias. The group had planned to build a mosque on the property. That suit was settled in August and the town agreed to purchase the property from Moxley for $4.7 million.

The $800,000 loan will be through Frederick County Bank and the additional funds will come from the town's investment in the Maryland Local Government Investment Pool and a CD at BB&T bank, town manager Gloria Rollins said.

She said that the reason for borrowing a portion of the funds for the farm is that Walkersville has an unofficial policy to keep the equivalent of one year's budget saved in case of emergencies. Purchasing the farm outright would deplete a large chunk of those funds, she said.

"We like to keep enough money in the bank that if we didn't get any money for an entire year ... we could still operate for a whole year," Rollins said. "So by not depleting all of that cash, by borrowing the $800,000 ... we could make it through with putting some capital projects on hold."

Town officials hope to expedite the process of purchasing the Moxley farm.

"We want to get this done no later than the first of the year," Burgess Ralph Whitmore said.

E-mail Courtney Pomeroy at cpomeroy@gazette.net.