PHILLIPS — Selectmen appealed to residents Tuesday to serve on the town Budget Committee.

The board reviewed the process to develop a working budget. Selectmen and the town manager review expenditures and anticipated revenues. The Budget Committee provides a review of those figures and makes additional recommendations or finds reasons to change the proposed figures, they said.

Budget Committee members simply need a level of commitment and a willingness to learn, board Chairman Lincoln Haines said. Appointments are for two years, and selectmen discussed whether that is enough time to learn the process.

“We need new perspectives and new ideas,” Haines said.

In other action, selectmen appointed Steven Ochmanski to the Appeals Board. The board needs another full-time member and two alternates, according to Town Manager Elaine Hubbard.

Selectmen also agreed to review the community’s emergency management plan. If town officials are faced with communitywide crises, such as a flood, contamination of drinking water, ice storm or flu pandemic, they need a group to address the problems in a unified manner.

Selectman Ray Gaudette asked Hubbard to contact the current representatives and gather them for a review of the current plan.

“We really need to update that plan,” he said.

Fire Chief James Gould is the emergency management director, and Gaudette will contact him to plan a meeting with the town road commissioner, fire chief, health officer, water district, school representatives and other officials who may need to respond in emergencies.

Hubbard asked selectmen to consider attending a Jan. 22 meeting at the State House in Augusta. The meeting starts at 9 a.m. in the Appropriations Committee Room.

“We have lost about $60,000 in state revenue sharing,” she said. “If we lose more, this will hit us hard.”

According to a report from Maine Municipal Association representative Geoff Herman, the municipal revenue sharing account enacted in June 2013, “was seriously raided by the Legislature for both the current fiscal year (2013-14) and next year (2014-15).”

The letter from the MMA to municipalities said the $146 million revenue sharing distribution was reduced to $60 million, with the remaining $86 million diverted to support the state budget. In addition, the budget directed a special “Tax Expenditure Review Task Force” to recommend $40 million worth of tax exemptions for elimination, putting up an additional $40 million of revenue sharing cuts as collateral should the effort fail, according to Herman.

Herman said that on Jan. 22, the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee would propose eliminating the automatic reduction of an additional $40 million from the state’s revenue sharing account.

“If the additional $40 million is drained out of the revenue sharing account, the municipal revenue sharing program will effectively be eliminated,” according to Herman’s letter to the town.