RUMFORD — The Select Board voted 5-0 Thursday to set a July 1 deadline for the town and Rumford Water District to reach a new agreement on shoveling out fire hydrants.

Board Chairperson Chris Brennick made a motion that the 1915 agreement remain in effect until then, which marks first day of the next fiscal year.

“That gives us six months to be able to sit down with the Water District and hammer out a new agreement,” he said.

Town Manager George O’Keefe was recommending termination of the agreement, in part, because he agrees with the Fire Department request to discontinue the practice.

For the past 109 years firefighters have removed snow from around the town’s hydrants, which have increased to number more than 200.

At a workshop Dec. 5, Fire Chief Chris Reed said a lot has changed since the agreement was made.

“There were 30 call force members and way fewer hydrants,” he said then. “So as we lost call force and we increased hydrants, we didn’t increase manpower.”

The past few years, he said, “we’ve done it all on overtime. You can’t use the duty crew to come out to Andover Road and have a call on Falmouth Street.”

Brennick said, “I don’t understand why we’re doing this at a time when the snow’s flying.” He said the town is also at the halfway point in the fiscal budget “and we’re deciding whether to shift operations responsibilities from one department to another at a time when they don’t have the flexibility in their budget.

“So I think for the remainder of this winter, and this fiscal year, we should talk about what’s in the budget and whether or not we need to add positions to highway or parks, or however we want to handle this,” he said.

Selectman John Pepin said, “The town of Rumford is going to be responsible for shoveling out the hydrants. We know that. Two, we know the agreement is old and obsolete. Three, we go away from the agreement, there’s going to have to be something in place. And I don’t think now is the time to do that. Right now, we need to figure out how to shovel out the hydrants.”

“This problem has been ongoing for years,” Selectman Frank DiConzo said. “It’s come up in the past and it keeps coming up. All entities must sit down and come up with a framework that works. It’s obsolete.”