AUBURN – The sloping floors, the musty offices and the cramped quarters that the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department calls home make it a miserable place, Lewiston City Councilor Tom Peters admitted.

“I just don’t think people should be working in this,” Peters said Monday as he and fellow councilors toured the Androscoggin County Building. “It’s moldy, it’s depressing.”

The question, he said, is how will the county fix it.

“It’s going to take money, and nobody wants to pay more,” Peters said. “Lewiston certainly doesn’t.”

Commissioners Elmer Berry and Helen Poulin and Sheriff Guy Desjardins led councilors on a tour of the county building and functions. County functions, including dispatch and the Androscoggin County Jail, amount to $2.2 million in Lewiston’s 2008-09 budget.

“I just think it’s important to get a sense of where our money is going,” Peters said.

The tour went from the offices for the Registers of Deeds and Probate, back through county clerk, treasurer and commissioner functions to the sheriff’s dispatch center and offices for the the county’s deputies.

The sheriff’s functions drew most of the comments. They included the cramped and outdated dispatch center, due for a massive systems upgrade. Desjardins said the budget originally called for $400,000 in upgrades but more recent estimates put it at about $270,000.

Then Desjardins led councilors on a tour of his deputies offices, through a warren of cluttered hallways and cramped, moldy offices.

“We have substations in Turner and Poland that are nicer than this,” Desjardins said. Deputies don’t have a reliable place to interview witnesses, victims or suspects in their portion of the building. They’ll use the county commissioners’ room on the main floor, if it’s unoccupied.

“They prefer to do interviews in their car, or use offices in the Lewiston or Auburn police stations, if they’re available,” he said.

Peters and the Lewiston councilors urged Berry and Desjardins to come up with some idea for new space quickly. It could involve reconfiguring offices in the building itself or finding new space in another building, in Lewiston, Auburn or anywhere else in the county.

Peters suggested they begin meeting with other local officials right away.

“I think you should have the Auburn council to take this tour, and Greene and Leeds, too,” Peters said. “We don’t need to form another committee that’s going take two years to make a recommendation, but we do need to start talking.”