LEWISTON – High costs to Androscoggin County’s small towns have derailed efforts to create a unified emergency dispatch service.

Lewiston, Auburn and Durham were the only municipalities to support combining Lewiston-Auburn 911 and the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department dispatch service.

Eight others – Greene, Lisbon, Livermore Falls, Mechanic Falls, Minot, Poland, Sabattus and Turner – said they wanted to keep things the way they were.

Representatives from each community and from Androscoggin County had worked since January 2007 on ways to combine services and trim costs. Wednesday’s meeting put a final note on that effort.

“I think we needed at least 85 percent support to continue talking about this, and we obviously didn’t get it,” said Lewiston City Administrator James Bennett, co-chairman of the group.

The group will meet again this fall to discuss dispatch funding issues going before the county. County dispatch services need a $400,000 equipment upgrade, Bennett said.

“Things will not stay the way they have been, not for long,” he said.

Combined, county communities spend about $2.6 million annually for dispatch services. The proposed $400,000 in equipment upgrades would add another $55,000 a year to the budget.

The committee released a report in July showing that a unified dispatch center would cost about $38,000 less per year and would require two fewer full-time dispatch employees than the current systems.

The report came up with three ways to share costs among the county’s towns and cities: property values, population and calls for service.

Representatives at Wednesday’s meeting agreed that the model based on calls for service was the most popular. Auburn, Lisbon and Livermore Falls would see their costs drop drastically under that plan. Costs for Lewiston and Sabattus would rise by more than $100,000 each, while costs for the rest of the towns would increase less drastically.

“I’ve been instructed by my Board of Selectmen that I can continue listening as long as the discussion is about calls for service,” said Errol Additon of Leeds. “But I’ve been instructed to stop listening if we talk about anything else.”

Others said even that model had little hope of succeeding. Turner now pays $26,224 for dispatch services. That would increase by $44,803 under the calls for service model and would go higher under the other models.

“There is not a chance of going to my town meeting and getting voters to support spending $44,000 more for the exact same service,” Mike Arsenault of Turner said.

Co-chairman Steve French, Minot’s fire chief, said he was directed by his selectman to vote against combining.

“I’m torn, because I think we’ve done some good work here,” French said. “I think we have the right idea.”