RUMFORD – A charter hearing will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 7, in the municipal building auditorium to discuss unfinished business from last year, Town Manager Len Greaney said.

The Board of Selectmen’s meeting will follow at 7 p.m.

Greaney said Wednesday that the hearing would wrap up “a whole bunch of loose ends that didn’t get approved last year when the Charter Commission did their thing.”

Selectmen have a variety of issues to deal with at their meeting.

Greaney said he will ask the board to consider reducing the appraised cost of a small portion of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education Park, land that selectmen and town meeting voters OK’d selling to Bisson and Hebert.

“I think they plan to put up a small building there, so, it’s a little bit of economic development,” Greaney said. “That’s why I’m recommending that we sell it at a lower-than-appraised cost, to give them a break.”

Aside from adopting the proposed 2009-10 municipal budget for the annual town meeting warrant and approving the warrant itself, other agenda items include:

• Nominating someone to the Rumford Wall of Fame plaque, which currently has only one person on it – Chummy Broomhall. The board will also discuss creating a process by which residents can also nominate people in the future.

• An update from Economic Development coordinator Phil Blampied on the town’s recent Community Development Block Grant award of $200,000.

• Discussion of ethnic group plaques.

• Possible approval of an Assistance to Firefighters Grant.

• Possible approval of Strathglass Park Improvement Projects.

• Discussion of town acceptance of the West Ellis and Rumford Point cemeteries.

• Discussion of the River Valley Technology Center building.

The ethnic group plaque discussion centers on Hazel LeBlanc Hodgkins, who last year successfully lobbied selectmen to OK the placing of a plaque recognizing Rumford’s early Acadian settlers on a stone at the entrance to the new Androscoggin River Walk Trail.

Hodgkins now wants the plaque to be placed on one of the large boulders beside the town library, along with plaques from other ethnic groups representing other town settlers, Greaney said.

Town Safety Officer and police Chief Stacy Carter will also ask selectmen to OK a 5-percent match to get about $100,000 through an Assistance to Firefighters grant for equipment.

“It may even help us do some of the code compliance issues at the Fire Department that we’d have to pay out of our pocket now,” Greaney said. “So, this fund, if we approve it, helps us financially and functionally.”

Next on the agenda, Blampied will highlight a number of proposed improvement projects at one of Rumford’s early building districts, Strathglass Park.

One project involves posting lights atop the two granite posts at the park’s entrance; another would improve a currently unsafe pathway through the park, Greaney said.

Greaney said the cemetery associations would like selectmen to accept the plots since Rumford’s Park’s Department takes care of town cemeteries. He said both cemeteries are about 2 acres each and contain an estimated 80 to 100 grave sites each, many of which are veterans.

Of the technology center, Greaney said its board president, Dick Lovejoy, asked to be placed on the agenda to solicit $25,000 from the town’s economic development account for the center.

“I’m 100 percent sure he’s going to get a ‘No,'” Greaney said.

He then explained that selectmen only budgeted $25,000 for the account and of that, $20,000 will be used as the town’s match for the CDBG grant Rumford has received.