Lewiston and Auburn share taxes, trash, water and rock salt.

An airport, a bus line, a 911 dispatch center and an economy.

By many accounts, they share more than any two cities in Maine.

But there’s room to get cozier, according to the Twin Cities’ mayors.

And Normand Guay and Lionel Guay know cozy.

The brothers shared a bedroom growing up.

Last month, the Guays assigned 10 residents to comb the books to find ways to link more of the two cities’ services for savings or efficiencies. They’ve got a flexible nine-month timeline and no rules. Every service and expense is in play. The group met for the first time Oct. 29. If the group comes back with ideas that save money or make sense, the mayors say they’ll bring the recommendations to their respective city councils next year for a vote.

They expect support.

“If we have a product in our hand that says, If we do this and we’re going to save money’… I can’t imagine someone not voting for that,” Auburn Mayor Normand Guay said. “I think the people serving on the councils now in Auburn and Lewiston have that courage.”

The brothers say their discussions about working together started way before Carol Palesky’s proposed tax cap, which was defeated Tuesday, and way before they were even elected to office.

It’s a political gamble, Normand Guay readily admits. But that’s OK. “We’re not politicians.”

He’s going to term himself out in two years and warns: “If you’re really going to be successful as an elected official, when you get done, no one will like you.”

Cities across Maine are turning to neighbors to save money: Portland and Westbrook are thinking of mingling fire departments, South Portland is in talks to share dispatch services with Scarborough or Cape Elizabeth, and Brewer and Bangor plan curbside trash bids together next year. But no two big municipalities, it appears, are going at it with the fervor Lewiston and Auburn have.

“They’re being public about the fact turf doesn’t matter, it’s the quality of the service, and I think that’s an important statement to make,” said Michael Starn, spokesman at the Maine Municipal Association. “I think that L-A is uniquely situated and have a long history of being able to work together. That’s something that doesn’t exist in that many communities.”

Making nice; making money

The Twin Cities made their first major investment together more than 100 years ago when Lewiston desperately needed workers for its textile mills. People were willing to come down from Canada but the railroad tracks only came as close as Danville Junction in Auburn.

It was horse and buggy from there.

“Maybe in July and August it wasn’t a bad trip, in November/December it had to be a challenge,” said Lucien Gosselin, former Lewiston city administrator and president of the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council.

The cities built 6.5 miles of track and Lewiston picked up most of the tab, even though most of the terrain was in Auburn.

Lewiston has gotten its drinking water out of Lake Auburn since 1899. The cities took over the airport together in 1946 when the Department of Defense turned it over to both in equal measure.

But things weren’t always lovey-dovey.

By the time Gosselin came to Lewiston in 1969 as a controller, or finance director, there were plenty of anecdotes about run-ins between the two cities, he said. Lewiston firefighters, who had more equipment and manpower, griped about putting out fires in Auburn. Lewiston detectives who went across the bridge to investigate crimes got chased out by Auburn police.

“The competition was getting furious in the two cities,” Gosselin said.

He and Auburn City Manager Bernie Murphy organized a voluntary retreat for department heads in 1975 on neutral territory (Rockland), mediated by a neutral party (from the University of Maine). Its unofficial theme: “Why are we doing this to each other?”

“There were very tense moments there. Police chiefs were at each other’s throats, fire chiefs were competing,” Gosselin said.

But from that moment, slowly, things turned around.

Most the more than two dozen agreements struck between the cities happened after that ’75 retreat.

Joint purchasing goes back to 1976. There have been Twin Cities committees for cable TV, watersheds and the turnpike.

Since 1997, Lewiston has taken its trash to the Mid-Maine Waste Action Corp. in Auburn. In exchange, MMWAC takes the ash to Lewiston’s landfill. The contract gives both parties below-market rates, says Executive Director Joe Kazar.

Former Lewiston Mayor Paul Dionne, who was elected in 1979, said he enjoyed a good relationship with Auburn Mayor R. Peter Whitmore. The pair hit the road every two to three months talking to different community groups about the cities’ work together.

“We called it the Peter and Paul Show,'” Dionne said.

They also joined efforts to woo the University of Maine System.

“It took the cooperation of both communities to convince the governor and convince the Legislature and ultimately the trustees to put a campus here,” he said. And it worked.

When the cities developed the industrial park at the Auburn-Lewiston Airport and agreed to split tax revenue, it marked a Maine first.

Chip Morrison, now head of the local Chamber of Commerce but then Auburn’s city manager, said Auburn probably didn’t have the capital to pull the project off by itself.

A Lewiston economic group built the first spec building to attract tenants.

“That’s huge,” said Morrison. “Think about it: Why is the Lewiston Development Corp. building a building in Auburn?”

Last year, Auburn cut Lewiston a check for $300,000, its share of taxes from the Airport Industrial Park, according to Lewiston Finance Director Dick Metivier. And Lewiston sent Auburn a check for $190,000 – that city’s share from another tax agreement, this one on a hydroelectric project in Lewiston.

Back in 1984, when both cities were competing to build the hydroelectric plant on their side of the river, Lewiston and Auburn called a truce and agreed – one city would get the project but they’d both benefit.

Aubiston? Lewiburn? Not yet

When they meet this month, members of the Commission on Joint Services will be treading familiar territory.

In 1996, mayors on both side of the Androscoggin River convened the 19-member L-A Together. A year before, a survey out of Bates College found more than 65 percent of residents in both cities wanted their governments to cooperate more.

After taking 10 months, that group’s recommendations ranged from drawing up lists of joint capital projects every year to formally agreeing that whoever’s closer fights fires first, regardless of location.

Neither happened. Nor did what commission co-chairman Peter Garcia remembers as the easiest change – combining the General Assistance programs after a retirement in the Lewiston office – or the most significant – agreeing to split the tax revenue from any business attracted by the LAEGC, no matter which city it settled in.

“There’s nothing in this report the city council could not have adopted a month after this came out,” said Garcia, an attorney at Skelton, Taintor & Abbott. “There’s no record either council ever looked comprehensively at the recommendations.”

He was disappointed: “A lot of effort so far has gone for naught.”

More than 40 local people worked on that report. One of its successes, he said: stronger language at the growth council that prevented developers from shopping either city for a better deal.

LAEGC now has one loan committee for both cities, one set of guidelines.

“I think they did a tremendous job,” said former Auburn Mayor Bob Thorpe, who initiated L-A Together with then-Mayor John Jenkins in Lewiston. “We’re so far ahead of any other two cities in the state of Maine, what we do jointly, it’s just a model.”

Thorpe’s term ran out right after the report came out.

Normand Guay sat on the Auburn City Council back then. The brothers were born in Lewiston. He’d moved to Auburn in 1980.

“In all honesty, eight years ago, both communities were doing much better economically. When an economy’s doing well, people’s vision is much shorter-range than when the economy isn’t going well,” he said.

In assembling the new commission, the Guays say it was important to have a nonpolitical board. The group won’t even see the mayors for the next nine months unless it asks.

They agree L-A Together laid a foundation, but maybe back then, Normand Guay said, “They didn’t have the vision that we have and probably were more parochial.”

The Guays are looking for specifics: If department X merged with department Y, about how much would be saved during the next six months, one year, three years, or how much better would service be?

Maybe a proposal involving the fire departments wouldn’t save money “but the response time is going to be, say, 30 seconds less,” Lionel Guay said. “That 30 seconds could save somebody.”

Any of these changes won’t involve layoffs, he said. Instead, if reductions were to occur, jobs would be left empty as people leave.

Even with all the existing collaboration, there’s room for more, Lionel Guay said. There have been missed opportunities in the past. Look at the libraries, which each are working on renovations: “Both cities are spending all that money we could have spent somewhere else,” he said.

In 1993, when both libraries had outgrown their space, Auburn put up money to look for one site together. Lewiston didn’t. Today, both are spending more than $9 million in public and private money for separate library additions.

As with that decision, don’t look for everyone in the two communities to be happy when the mayors’ group comes out with its report.

Normand Guay says he believes it won’t be too long before state mandates force communities to cooperate more: “We’re going to be ahead of the curve. Other communities are going to be looking to us. What we’re doing is very bold.”

Perhaps it’s time for the cities to form a metropolitan public safety organization, suggested Gosselin. Or streamline the water and sewer systems, the schools or even both cities’ payroll.

“I think the mayors are right on the mark,” he said. “Their success can be the success of L-A.”

Morrison, the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce president, emphasized that the mayors are only part of the process. Both city councils must buy in to any change.

“The biggest surprise would be one community – Lewiburn or Aubiston,” he said. “That’s a big step. I think someday it’ll happen, sometime probably in my lifetime.”

That won’t happen this time around, the Guays say, although they joke about starting a merge from the top down. Lionel could be mayor one day, Normand the next.

“I think it’s a shame that we had to wait until we elected brothers to act like we are brothers, but this is another great opportunity to further a tradition that actually sets us apart from other municipalities,” Garcia said.