RUMFORD — Residents anxious to give selectmen their thoughts on town budgets will have an opportunity next week.

At the board’s Jan. 21 meeting, selectmen tabled action on the Citizen Budget Survey to their meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4, in Rumford Falls Auditorium. Town Manager Carlo Puiia told the board the proposed survey needed to be “tweaked,” before making it available to the public from both inside the town office and on the municipal Web site.

Selectmen then OK’d his recommendation to table it.

“It was my idea to be more transparent to the people,” Selectman Frank DiConzo said of the survey to start discussion. “I hope you people will participate.”

DiConzo said the survey “gives you an opportunity to assist us.”

“A lot of people in town think we’re not doing anything, but we are,” he said. “If you think we’re doing nothing, fill out the survey, make your comments known, put them out there.

“People seem to come out of the woodwork when something they’re concerned with comes up, but the survey is for the good of all, not just your wallet,” he said.

Selectman Mark Belanger said he had received several calls on the board’s goal to find cost savings of 10 percent in the current budget, which would then be applied to the coming budget.

“I don’t think people know what’s being done,” Belanger said. “We are striving for some percentage.”

In other business, Puiia told selectmen that the town voted last August to take any Regional School Unit No. 10 assessment carryover money and spread it over two years.

Now, however, he said the RSU wants Rumford to instead take the carryover credit of $526,386.83 over a three-year period or 30 months.

The town can do this by paying less on its annual assessment during the agreed-upon time.

Because it was appropriated to spend on education, Puiia said the money can’t be used for anything else.

Selectman Jeff Sterling suggested changing it to three years.

“It would certainly help in that third year, because that’s the year that ‘the cliff’ is being predicted,” Sterling said. “The cliff is when the stimulus money and reduction in state aid is all going to come together.”

Sterling said the school budget was able to survive this year on stimulus money, which will carry into the second year.

Selectmen then agreed with Sterling in principle, but instead opted for 30 months “for a small hedge,” Chairman Brad Adley said.

Puiia said the 30-month period would be from January to June 2010 and then the following 24 months in the second and third year.

Selectmen unanimously approved spreading the credit across the 30 months.

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