BURRILLVILLE — The Town Council president is urging local residents to attend a public hearing Oct. 6 and voice their displeasure with the state’s plan to cut off the town’s bus connection to Providence.

The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority will present its new “service reduction proposal,” answer questions from the public and collect public input on its plan to jettison a bus service that brings passengers back and forth from Zambarano Hospital to Kennedy Plaza in Providence, stopping in Glocester and Smithfield along the way.

Councilwoman Nancy Binns and other local officials hope to dissuade RIPTA from enacting the plan.

The meeting at Burrillville High School is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Information gathered at the meeting will be turned over to RIPTA’s board of directors, which still hasn’t approved the proposed change in bus service.

“The greater the number of people we can have there, the greater the number of people who can attest to the importance of that bus route to both communities,” she said.

RIPTA’s cost-savings plan would force local bus riders to find their own transportation back and forth from the Apple Valley Mall in Smithfield.

The proposal aims to help the authority address a $10.8-million budget shortfall this year caused by decreased gasoline-tax revenues across the state.

The tax is the authority’s principal means of support, officials say.

“We want to continue creating a first-class transit system for Rhode Island but that’s not possible with our current funding stream,” said RIPTA’s manager, Alfred J. Moscola.

Moscola said transit authorities across the country are trying to make do with less revenue and greater use of the transit system.

RIPTA has whittled down its original shortfall, projected at $12.2 million, by increasing its advertising revenue, leaving 12 staff vacancies unfilled, deferring certain capital projects and other

mreynold@projo.com