AUBURN – The local county and its towns too rarely talk.

Communication often begins and ends with the sharing of tax bills. So Androscoggin County Sheriff Guy Desjardins, who campaigned for almost a year on a platform of listening to people in his county’s 14 towns, plans to visit the councils or selectmen in each before the end of April.

And when he’s through, he plans to start over and do it again.

“Basically, I want to introduce myself,” the new sheriff said. He hopes the meetings will become more than that, though.

Like Auburn Mayor John Jenkins – holding city council meetings in each of the city’s five wards – Desjardins hopes to gather insight into what people are looking for from the Sheriff’s Department by answering their questions and gathering ideas.

“I think it’s up to me to understand what their interests are,” he said. “I am going out there to try to be a resource for them.”

In a letter to his department’s staff, Desjardins set the policy.

“County government is too often misunderstood,” he wrote. “(People) are unaware of the many services we can offer to their respective communities, most of which they are already paying for through county taxes.”

Desjardins, a selectman in Sabattus, has invited his deputies to get involved in their hometowns. And when he chose his chief deputy, Eric Samson, he saw it as a plus that the longtime corrections officer also served as an Auburn city councilor.

The two roles help each other.

At one of Jenkins’ ward meetings, Councilor Samson was able to draw on his former work as the county jail’s programs director to answer a question about use of inmates on community service projects.

“Sitting in both roles gives you an appreciation of the whole system,” Samson said.

Desjardins has already met with leaders in Minot, where many of the questions were aimed at plans for a costly consolidation of emergency dispatching across the county.

“I’m there,” said Desjardins, known to county dispatchers as “Unit One.” “I’m also a selectman. I know what the impact is.”