LEWISTON – Master plans and committees are great but they take time – and the Twin Cities don’t have time.

“Auburn is moving ahead with their downtown,” Councilor Tom Peters said. “Lewiston has needs of its own to address and we need to get moving.”

Councilors voted Tuesday to pull out of a joint downtown planning effort with the city of Auburn. A group of volunteers from each city has been meeting for the past two months to write a downtown master plan to be shared by the two cities. The group was tasked to set planning policy for both cities, making sure downtown developments complemented each other.

Master Plan Committee member Larry Gilbert Jr. – Mayor Larry Gilbert’s son – told councilors Tuesday the committee planned to take 18 months to draw up the plan, with the help of a hired consultant.

That’s too long, Lewiston City Councilor Denis Theriault said.

“We have to move fast now, and a committee that takes a year and a half is not going to get it done,” Theriault said.

That doesn’t mean that Theriault wants to be in competition with Auburn.

“We already work with Auburn, on a daily basis,” he said. “Our staff meets with their staff every day and they move much quicker than a committee can. So if there is going to be a cost savings between the two cities, staff is going to find it. We don’t need to form a bunch of committees to find savings.”

Councilor Robert Reed said he was skeptical of all efforts to combine services with Auburn and didn’t think it would work.

“Twin Cities really is the best name for us,” Reed said. “From the outside, we look like twins. We really do, to people from around Maine. But from the inside, we’re very different. There is just not the public will to combine services, so efforts to do it will never move forward.”

He added that he doubted the two would ever be a single community.

“Even if you filled the river in and built ball fields on it, we’d still be two communities,” Reed said.

Committee member Paul Robinson said he was sorry to see the councilors end the committee and thought it could have done good work.

“But if there’s no support for it, they needed to let it go,” Robinson said. “If we’re just doing this for no reason, we are just spinning our wheels. Nobody wants to do that.”