PARIS — Selectmen agreed to keep “hands off” the Budget Committee while its members meet with Town Manager Phillip Tarr to help prepare next year’s spending plan.

“I say hands off and let things proceed,” Selectmen Chairman Ray Glover told board members Monday night. His comment came after a lengthy and sometimes agitated discussion of the Board of Selectmen responsibilities to appointed boards and the need for the Budget Committee to understand the process to develop a budget for fiscal year 2011-12.

The debate occurred when Selectman Ted Kurtz complained that the Budget Committee answers to the Board of Selectmen and not the town manager and should therefore be meeting with selectmen.

“My concern is that our board is abdicating our responsibility,” Kurtz said.

“These boards work for us not for you,” said Kurtz of appointed committees, which under the town’s organizational chart report directly to the selectmen.

Kurtz said the Budget Committee was simply “rubber stamping” Tarr’s recommended budget and then selectmen “essentially rubber stamp it” before voters approve it at annual town meeting each spring.

“I just don’t want these relationships to be skewed. Even with good intentions, the Budget Committee works for the Board of Selectmen,” said Kurtz, who unsuccessfully made a motion to have the Budget Committee meet with the board. The motion did not receive a second from fellow members.

Tarr told selectmen the Budget Committee has begun meeting monthly with him in order to become familiar with the process. “I don’t think the board (of selectmen) is being left out of the process,” he said. He called the Budget Committee’s work “energetic and positive.”

Tarr said the Budget Committee wanted to understand the process better and to become more involved with planning, including making recommendations on capital items.

“They want dialog, not just from February to April,” he said of the traditional budget preparation period.

Glover said in his opinion, just meeting for a few months does not allow the Budget Committee time to understand the financial process of the town.

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