MEXICO – Med-Care Ambulance’s Steve Brown is not looking forward to Saturday, June 7.

That’s the day that could spell the demise of the successful, 20-year-old Mexico-based service that provides jobs for 60 people and emergency medical coverage for 17,000 people in 11 towns, among other benefits.

It’s also a poster child for state regionalization efforts.

To continue operations, though, 80 percent of that total population must vote to approve another decade-long contract. Otherwise, the contract expires and everyone involved in the company enters new legal territory.

So far, Byron, Canton, Carthage, Dixfield, Newry, Peru and Roxbury have renewed the contract, but Andover and Mexico voted against it. That leaves Hanover and Rumford; both will put the decision to voters at 6 p.m. Monday, June 2.

However, the outcome of the Hanover and Rumford tallies might not be enough to make a difference, because Andover and Mexico combine to account for more than 20 percent of the service’s total population, Brown said.

“It’s fairly critical that this gets voted through,” he said. “I’ve been working on things here by the hour, trying to protect the jobs of 60 and still provide EMS coverage for 17,000 people. I’m very concerned here.”

Dixfield voters were the most recent to approve the 10-year interlocal agreement renewal, at Thursday night’s marathon town meeting that dipped into Friday. Brown stayed until the wee hours of Friday to tell voters how important Med-Care is.

“This thing worked because it saved all the towns money. None could afford to do it alone. That’s why I tried to get across the seriousness of it (at public hearings and town meetings). The interlocal agreement is pretty cut and dried. Where the current one expires (June 7), to renegotiate after that, you have to come up with a new expiration date and what entity does that? I don’t know. It’s pretty scary,” said Brown, who’s president of Med-Care’s board of directors.

At the May 21 special town meeting in Mexico, Med-Care Executive Director Dean Milligan told voters that if 80 percent of the service’s population doesn’t OK the contract, Med-Care could dissolve or realign itself with towns that approved the contract and only provide service to them.

Many believe that Med-Care put the cart before the horse when company directors decided last fall to go ahead with a $2.2 million building expansion project knowing the company’s contract would expire in June. That cost has since been downgraded to $1.9 million – and groundbreaking is on hold until 2009 – as incentive to get the renewal contract signed first.

“If people don’t want to support this, then they can come up and do something else … If people wanted to vote this down, they should have done it a long time ago, then worked something else out. There’s not much time here now for Mexico (or Andover) to change its vote,” Brown said.

Before Med-Care can go bust, if that’s what happens come June 7, state law requires it to give a 30-day notice in newspapers.

“If the towns vote to continue it by June 7 or soon after, it’s probably salvageable,” Brown added.