FARMINGTON – Selectmen have authorized Town Manager Richard Davis to seek a cost proposal to participate in a study that Franklin County commissioners are having done on the sheriff’s department office and communications center.

Smith Reuter Lull Architects, of Lewiston and Bethel, have been hired by the commissioners to conduct a study to alleviate space concerns at the county courthouse and the sheriff’s building.

A preliminary idea was to build a public safety facility on 14 acres of county property to house county emergency dispatching service, sheriff’s department, county commission administration, county emergency management agency and possibly the Farmington Police Department, which has been working in tight quarters for years.

Commissioners voted to move on to the final stages of the contract with the architect firm on July 2.

Those stages in the study would be to develop a set of plans and budgets outlining the feasibility and economics, and finding funding sources to make them happen.

The firm’s proposed fee is $31,500 for the county projects, not including Farmington police.

The idea, if the two police departments were housed in the same building, would be to share some common space such as a training room, locker rooms and a kitchen, and have separate spaces for other needs.

Farmington has conducted two studies on space, and both showed the police department’s current space is inadequate, Davis said Wednesday. It all comes down to funding, he noted.

Sharing space in a facility with the Sheriff’s Department might be potentially less expensive, he said, than if the town was to go out on its own to build a new police station.

“We would need to know what sort of cost it would take to participate in the study,” Davis said.

The town doesn’t have any money set aside for it but selectmen asked Davis to find out what the cost would be to participate in the study.

“At this time, it’s all very preliminary but we think we have some potential to work with the county,” Davis said.

In other police business, selectmen voted to ratify a one-year contract with the bargaining unit of the Maine Association of Police, which covers 12 Farmington police members.

The contract, if ratified by the police union, would give a 2.8 percent pay increase retroactive to April 1. That increase is the same that other town employees received, Davis said.

The pact also gives two hours more of vacation time per month to police employees after they have been there for 10 years and increases education incentives, Davis said.

Health insurance contributions remained the same with the town and employees picking up a share of the premiums.

The reason a one-year contract was negotiated, Davis said, is the town is in the process of having a compensation study done and a new contract would be negotiated pending the outcome. The last time a pay study was done was in 2001.

“I think it’s a fairly good agreement for both sides,” Davis said. “It’s fairly conservative.”

Union representatives Sgt. Shane Cote and officer Ed Hastings were unavailable for comment on the pact Wednesday.

In an other matter, selectmen appointed Joyce Morton as SAD 9 director to fill a vacancy left by Francis Orcutt. Morton is a veteran of the board and chose not to run for re-election this year.