By Terry Karkos,Staff Writer

RUMFORD – Fire departments from six River Valley area towns were scrutinized Tuesday night as possible candidates for regionalization.

But the consensus among chiefs from Dixfield, Mexico, Peru and Rumford was that the region’s mutual aid system works just fine.

Mutual aid, they said, resolves staffing issues that would be problematic if the departments were to be combined into one large, central station with outlying satellite stations in each of the towns.

“Mutual aid works very, very good in this area,” said Mexico Fire Chief Gary Wentzell.

But many of the 20 emergency and municipal officials at Tuesday’s two-hour meeting in the Rumford municipal building auditorium agreed that regionalization would give some of the outlying communities better service.

Byron Selectman Steve Duguay said his town’s fire department, which has an annual budget of $3,000, would have a new firetruck in two weeks, but no one to operate it.

“That’s why we’re at these meetings,” Duguay said.

Oxford County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Jim Davis said the problem with regionalization was what taxpayers were willing to allow.

“Most people like that local control aspect. That will be a hard thing to overcome. There are a lot of issues like that to overcome before regionalization will work,” Davis said.

The group also discussed needs of area police and Med-Care Ambulance Service, which covers 11 towns in 266 square miles of western Maine.

Near the end of the meeting, Rumford Town Manager Steve Eldridge asked fire and police chiefs and Med-Care Director Dean Milligan to each assemble a scope of services on their respective departments.

That material is to be discussed at the group’s next meeting at 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 16, in the Mexico town office.

“I think we’re gaining momentum,” said Dixfield Selectman Tony Carter of the meeting. “We don’t have enough information yet to determine if this is something we want to go forward with or not. Ultimately, the taxpayers will decide.”

Eldridge also believed that the group was finding common ground.

“This was a step in the right direction,” he said. “Just the fact that we had people sitting at this table is a plus. But we’re a long way from anywhere right now.”