AUBURN – The Twin Cities could have one police department in the next five years, according to a report released on the Internet this weekend.
The report, by the Mayor’s Commission on Joint Services, calls for consolidation of the city’s bread-and-butter services – police and public works – over the next five years. It suggests eventual cooperation for Lewiston and Auburn fire departments and school systems.
Back office services, such as building codes and computer systems, would be the first things to be consolidated. That could be done within a year, if the cities start right away.
“Our main conclusion is that there are a number of things that we could do to make both operations much more efficient,” said Robert Clifford, co-chairman of the commission.
Clifford and co-chairwoman Donna Steckino will report their findings Monday at a joint meeting of the city councils.
Called together in 2004 by brother mayors Normand Guay of Auburn and Lionel Guay of Lewiston, the group’s job was to find cost savings from combined services.
The effort builds on a 1996 project, L/A Together project. A group of community leaders issued a report then that called for combining many city services for budget savings.
Steckino said the cities would have saved about $2 million over the past 10 years if they’d done what the L/A Together group suggested.
“The two shining city halls, two beautiful libraries, are perfect examples that it wasn’t followed,” Clifford said. “Those could have been done differently, and I think people would have appreciated it.”
The new group released an early draft in October 2005, with the initial finding that follow-through is the most important thing. The cities need someone to shepherd the process for the next several years.
That will be part of Monday’s talk, Steckino said. The report calls on the councils to appoint a committee to begin working toward joint operations and to hire an administrator to lead the effort.
“We don’t want this to just be put into a drawer and forgotten for another 10 years,” she said.
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