By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

An effort to combine some Lewiston-Auburn services won’t get the full $200,000 the cities requested.

But a $45,000 grant from the Maine Development Foundation should easily pay for an efficiency study, local officials said.

“The foundation only gave out $1 million for the whole state, and their goal was to fund as many projects as they could,” said Heather Hunter, Lewiston’s deputy finance director. “So, we understand that nobody got everything they asked for.”

The grants are part of Gov. John Baldacci’s effort to make local government more efficient. The foundation, which began taking grants in December, received 41 requests. The requests totaled more than $3 million.

The foundation approved 26 of the applications. Locally, efforts to combine emergency dispatch centers received $100,000 and municipal services in Lewiston and Auburn received $45,000. That foundation also approved a $10,000 grant to look into providing engineering and planning services in smaller area towns.

Combined dispatching?

Police dispatchers throughout Androscoggin County are studying ways to combine their services, and Andy D’Eramo, director of Lewiston-Auburn 911, said the $100,000 grant should pay that.

“It really takes the burden off of our members,” D’Eramo said. “Up to this point, each member has had to pay a share of the study.”

According to a new state law, 911 call-answering centers for Lisbon, Androscoggin County and Lewiston-Auburn will have to combine operations by October.

Local officials are also considering combining dispatch services. The three agencies currently take all the 911 calls and dispatch all emergency workers in Androscoggin County. In January, the group began a study, which has cost about $8,000 plus expenses so far.

D’Eramo said the rest of the grant could be used to train dispatchers for the newly combined service. The group has talked about needing a new building and systems for the new dispatch service, but he didn’t think the grant would help pay for that.

“What we need to do now is meet with the Maine Development Foundation and go over the details, find out how it gets distributed and what they need from us,” he said.

Moving ahead

Lewiston and Auburn had asked for $200,000 to study combining services. The first $45,000 was designated to study combining services – specifically paying for a consultant to help the Mayor’s Commission on Joint Cooperation.

Donna Steckino, co-chair of that commission, said that money and an additional $15,000 grant Baldacci gave the group in January, should be just enough.

“It should let us get the job mostly – if not completely – done,” Steckino said.

Co-chair Robert Clifford said he is pleased with the grant.

“I think we have just enough that we can do a good job,” he said. The group has been interviewing consultants for the last couple of months and should be able to pick someone in the next couple of weeks.

“We’re still trying to gather ideas,” he said. The group has met with city leaders, but not rank-and-file staffers.

“We’ve been waiting for a consultant to organize that,” Clifford said. “Now that we have this, I think we should be able to move forward and find someone to do the legwork for us.”

Lewiston’s Hunter said the remaining $155,000 that the cities had asked for would have been used to evaluate software, combine some training sessions and create a medical awareness program for municipal employees.

“Since we didn’t get that, we’ll have to look at what we did receive and see if we’ll have anything left,” Hunter said. “The important thing is, it allows us to move forward with the mayors’ commission study.”

Another $10,000 grant will let the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments explore hiring municipal professionals to work with small-town governments in the area.

According to a new state law, 911 call-answering centers for Lisbon, Androscoggin County and Lewiston-Auburn will have to combine operations by October.
Local grant winners

• $100,000 for regional emergency communication consolidation: Androscoggin County, Auburn, Durham, Greene, Leeds, Lewiston, Livermore, Livermore Falls, Minot, Mechanic Falls, Poland, Turner and Wales.

• $45,000 for the efficient delivery of local services: Lewiston and Auburn.

• $10,000 to establish a municipal services group: Farmington, Norway, Lewiston, Poland and Wales.

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