RUMFORD — Selectmen at Thursday night's meeting set a goal of cutting 10 percent from Rumford's $6 million budget to alleviate the decrease in town valuation.

The conserved money would be used to decrease next year's tax rate.

"I think we all agree, we've got to do something," Selectman Robert Cameron said. "I'm concerned that if we set a goal of 5 percent and get there, we'll be successful, but it will only be 5 percent."

"But, if we set a goal of 10 percent and only get to 8 percent, we won't be successful, but we will save more money," he explained.

The rest of the board agreed and voted 5-0.

However, that quick reasoning followed much discussion about trying to stave off the impact of a 22½-percent increase in the tax rate due to the loss of nearly $116 million in the combined value of the NewPage Corp. paper mill and Brookfield Power Co., Rumford's two largest taxpayers.

Town Manager Carlo Puiia started the discussion, which then subsided until the cost-savings goal topic came up.

He clarified or corrected previous statements he made to the public through the media by saying that in addition to the Board of Assessors, townspeople — not selectmen — also decide the tax rate when deciding budget matters on initiated articles at town meeting.

Additionally, Puiia said that his previous figure of $93 million for NewPage's drop in value was off by more than $3 million.

Instead, it is $96.6 million and caused by depreciation and market offsets due to changing trends and the recession.

That, combined with a loss of about $19 million from the hydropower company, brought the total drop to about $116 million, causing a reduction in the town's value from $614 million to $498 million.

"We realize that our mill (tax) rate is going up 4.4 mills," he said. "We knew all along that the mill was not going to be at full value and, this past year, we experienced a significant drop in their valuation."

Generally, Rumford has experienced small tax-rate increases over the years.

"We've been very fortunate, but this is not one of those years, unfortunately," he said. "We're still very fortunate to have this industry in our town."

He said that last year, the mill generated about $80 million in payroll and benefits to workers.

"Now, we know they're not all residents, but, still, that's a big cog in the economy, and we're grateful for that," Puiia said.

But the huge reduction in the town's value means either services must be cut or taxpayers must shoulder a greater burden, or some livable combination of the two.

"It's going to be a tough year for the town, not only for municipal government, but also for the citizens and we realize that," Puiia said.

"But we have to make sure our streets are safe; we have to look at the police force," he said. "But we just had a double homicide this past year and we have acts of violence, so we have to have an appropriate law enforcement agency that is funded well enough."

"We have a fire department and their budget was reduced this past year, and we're doing our best to accommodate staff reduction," he said. "Our public works department is very good at clearing and preparing the roads."

"We all expect our winter roads to be safe and we've come to believe that salt and sand is a necessity, not an option," he said. "So, these are all things we decided we don't want to move from much."

"I just want you to know that in no way did this board want to raise the mill rate in a way that would be unaffordable," Puiia said.

He then suggested that taxes don't have to be paid in one lump sum, but can be paid in installments, albeit with an interest penalty applied if the Nov. 16 deadline is bypassed.

In the cost-saving discussion, Selectman Mark Belanger urged the board to try to realize a percentage of savings from the town's $6 million budget to offset next year's taxes.

Selectman Greg Buccina suggested establishing a spending freeze with no capital spending and stopping all unscheduled overtime in any department without prior sanction from a department head through Puiia.

Police Chief Stacy Carter objected to the overtime freeze, steering selectmen instead to set a reachable goal, which they did.

"My goal is keeping this community safe and keeping crime down, so I think that cutting overtime is really going to hamper us," Carter said. "That would put the safety of my officers and our citizens at risk. Don't handcuff us so we can't do our jobs."

tkarkos@sunjournal.com