TIVERTON — The two factions that clashed at the last Financial Town Meeting are back making their cases for candidates in the elections this fall.

One group, Tiverton Citizens for Change, is driven by fear that ever-increasing taxes will force some residents to sell their homes.

The other group, the Alliance to Preserve Tiverton’s Quality, says it wants to maintain a basic safety net of municipal services in the face of rising costs.

Each group has endorsed the candidates it believes best represent its views.

Tiverton Citizens for Change would throw out three of the four incumbents on the Town Council who seek reelection. They are council President Louise Durfee, and council members Joanne Arruda and Hannibal Costa.

The exception is the council’s vice president, Donald Bollin, who stands out because he helped develop a proposed charter amendment that would prohibit the use of town resources to influence any vote affecting the town, according to David Nelson, president of Tiverton Citizens for Change.

In addition to Bollin, Tiverton Citizens for Change endorsed four Town Council candidates. They are former council member Cecil Leonard, who headed a controversial Charter Review Committee during the last year; and political newcomers Jay Lambert, Roger Winiarski and Ed Roderick.

The group also has endorsed a single candidate for School Committee, Danielle Coulter, and two candidates for Budget Committee, Coulter’s husband, Rob, and Tom Parker.

For Town Council, The Alliance to Preserve Tiverton’s Quality has endorsed Bollin and Roderick as well as incumbents Durfee, Costa and Arruda. It has also endorsed Christopher Cotta, the outgoing chairman of the Budget Committee, and Michael Burk, the outgoing vice president of the School Committee.

The Alliance did not endorse candidates for School Committee or Budget Committee, with president John Foley saying that the personal interviews involved in the vetting process were too time consuming for the volunteer group to do justice to the other races.

Tiverton Citizens for Change based its endorsements on written responses to questionnaires submitted to all the candidates.

The questions zeroed in on whether the candidates would exceed a state-mandated ceiling on tax increases in the next budget.

Generally, the endorsed candidates opposed raising taxes above the maximum, “but they said there were clarifications and exceptions as to how they would proceed,” Nelson said.

The candidates said there were “variables that could cause them to consider overriding the tax cap,” Nelson said.

The group’s Web site says that the endorsed candidates’ responses to the questions are to be posted publicly.

But Nelson said he could not release the answers yesterday, because he still needed the permission of four of the endorsed candidates to disclose the information.

Nelson said that the incumbent leadership of the town maneuvered unfairly to reverse the initial vote of taxpayers last May to limit the increase in the tax levy to 5 percent in the current budget.

In effect, the taxpayers sought to cut $1.9 million from the Budget Committee’s recommendation, although Nelson quarreled with that characterization.

Instead, he said, the group wanted $1.9 million less growth in the budget.

The $1.9 million at the core of the debate included about $830,000 in debt service on school construction bonds and about $900,000 in operating expenses that had previously been financed through the town’s cash reserves, Nelson said.

He said the long-standing practice of dipping into the general fund has depleted it. “Tiverton’s leadership has steered us to this uneasy place,” he said in a statement, “exhausting the general fund and obligating the town with bond payments stretching out into the future by using backroom politics and catering to special interests.”

Foley, president of the Alliance to Preserve Tiverton’s Quality, strenuously disagreed with Nelson’s assessment.

The town, and not the Town Council, approves the budget at the Financial Town Meeting, he said. “It’s not accurate to say that they are at fault and we are going to vote them out,” Foley said, suggesting that Tiverton Citizens for Change has not done its homework.

Incumbent Council members were not happy about the budget, which carried a tax rate increase of 9.6 percent, Foley said.

But they had the “proper focus on making sure the town meets its commitments,” he said, both in paying debt service approved by voters in 2004 and continuing to provide basic services in the face of a combination of adverse events, the need to begin paying for new schools, declining outside income, constraints of a new tax relief law.

Nelson said he did not believe the town government would have suffered grievous harm if the taxpayer revolt had prevailed, but he could not offer the numbers to back up the assertion that the town could have gotten along on nearly $2 million less than the $41.8-million budget that was eventually approved.

He did suggest that teachers pay more of their health insurance premiums — an issue now part of a protracted labor dispute. He also said the town could cut overtime and reduce legal bills, which have escalated due to a protracted soil contamination suit involving the town.

Both the schools and the town need to cooperate to keep spending increases to the state-mandated ceiling, Nelson said.

“Failure to do so will make the outlying years worse and worse,” he said.

Foley, president of the Alliance, said the incumbent council members have the town’s best interests at heart.

Durfee, Bollin, Arruda and Costa have the experience necessary to provide much-needed continuity to the council in the future as it faces new challenges, he said.

The other candidates also have invaluable expertise, Foley said. He noted Cotta’s extensive knowledge of town affairs as a longtime chairman of the Budget Committee, Burke’s expertise in school matters, and Roderick’s background as a former member of the personnel board in Pawtucket.

While Tiverton Citizens for Change focuses on one issue, Foley said, the Alliance has a broader approach.

For example, the Alliance takes into consideration candidates’ support for the comprehensive plan, which aims to preserve the rural quality of Tiverton, he said.

The Alliance formed with the overall goal of improving the caliber of political candidates during the mid 1990s at a particularly low point in civil discourse on the Town Council, Foley said.

gmacris@projo.com