RUMFORD —Town Manager Carlo Puiia told selectmen Thursday night that the town is in good financial shape.

“Rumford is very financially stable,” he said. “As a whole, Rumford has done very well in the past, and it continues not to carry a lot of debt, unlike other towns.”

Also Thursday, Selectmen OK'd the town audit, which they received at their meeting. A suggestion to table it until they could fully understand it was not heeded.

Selectmen Jeffrey Sterling, Mark Belanger and Brad Adley attended. Greg Buccina was absent and Selectman Frank DiConzo is on medical leave.

The board also OK'd a routine application for a liquor license and special amusement permit for the Sons of Italy.

They tabled action on nonunion personnel wages for 2010-11, tweaks to the 1960s nonunion personnel policy, which hasn't been altered since 1998, and a request for $25,000 from cable franchise fees for local access television WVAC Channel 7.

Puiia suggested a 3 percent raise, the same as the new police union contract, however, with no increase this year and 3 percent each for the next two years. He said if the board approved that for the town's 26 nonunion employees, it would be approximately $28,951.

“But you have to keep in mind, there are no raises in the private sector,” Belanger countered. “We can't just keep piling on these raises and have taxes keep going up.”

“I think Mark is right,” Sterling said. “Many in the private sector haven't gotten a raise in three years.”

“I want to be fair, but we need to be prudent,” Belanger said.

“Do we want to be a 25 or 26 (tax-rate) town, or do we want to be where we want — a 20 mill-rate town?” he asked.

Selectmen then asked Puiia to assemble more information about raise options.

Belanger steered discussion on the nonunion personnel policy, suggesting changes to what Rumford pays for insurance coverage for employees and their dependents.

“We pay 70 percent for family and we pay 100 percent for employees,” he said. “That's unheard of anywhere,” though he admitted he hadn't checked other towns.

Puiia said it's an old policy that selectmen could tweak whenever they want.

Sterling, however, said it would be more prudent to hold a workshop to make changes and do everything once rather than do it piecemeal on a biweekly basis. The board scheduled one for 6 p.m. Thursday, March 4, before their next regular meeting.

Selectmen then considered Adley's self-described “spitball approach” of lobbing onto the discussion table the possibility of merging nonprofit entities, the Greater Rumford Community Center and Black Mountain Ski Resort, with the town Parks and Recreation Department as money-saving and efficiency measures.

“This is a real pie-in-the-sky look at it,” said Adley, a former Black Mountain director. “Can we do the things better, because it seems like we're all over the place. Maybe it's not viable, but I'd be willing to talk about it.”

Sterling said the board should think out of the box on the issue. Combining the community center and Parks and Recreation department “seems like a really logical fit,” he added.

Roger Arsenault, chairman of Black Mountain's Board of Directors, agreed with Sterling, and then suggested looking into what Camden has done.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com