LEWISTON – A refugee program coordinator hired to link the city with state services ends her job on Wednesday.

Victoria Scott helped get city, state and private agencies working together, according to her boss, Assistant City Administrator Phil Nadeau. She was paid with federal grant money obtained by the state Department of Labor and given to the city.

“The funding from the state was no longer available, and we are disappointed about that,” Nadeau said. “She was involved in a lot of the things and the programs that people take for granted now.”

Scott joined the city in December 2002 in the wake of Mayor Larry Raymond’s open letter to local Somalis. Raymond had asked Somalis to meter new immigration to Lewiston, setting off a storm of controversy.

As many as 1,000 new Somali immigrants had moved to Lewiston in the previous 18 months.

Scott was hired to organize programs for those immigrants.

“She came on to relieve some of the responsibilities I was shouldering,” Nadeau said. She became the city liaison between state agencies and private programs that help immigrant and refugee populations, like Catholic Charities Maine.

She was also put in charge of a twice-monthly newsletter that showed how many new people were applying for city aid and where they were from.

Scott said that newsletter changed in the past year, becoming an update on social service group activities in the central Maine.

“We received information from all over the country,” she said. “Local committees, councils and researchers all subscribed. Because of the notoriety Lewiston received, we had subscribers from all over the country and in Europe.”

She’ll continue to publish the newsletter on her own, once she settles into a new job.

“I’m hoping to find another location for it,” she said. “And I would really enjoy continuing to work with the immigrant and refugee community.”