After hiring a consultant to look into sharing town services to save cost and improve efficiency, and after that consultant stated that there was infrastructure and personnel enough for a population twice the towns’ size, both Rumford and Mexico town officials did what they always do — raise the budgets.

It is time to elect new selectmen who have the energy, the will and the ability to think outside the box to replace the current well-meaning but fossilized-in-thought current selectmen.

Voters in both towns should vote down their respective budgets and elect selectmen who are willing to go forward with a merging/sharing of services and selectmen willing to cut the budget based on performance and efficiency without the loss of currently provided services.

Change is overdue.

Albert Aniel, Mexico