AUBURN – Seeking to create a permanent work space for Androscoggin County’s patrol deputies, officials unveiled a plan Wednesday to build a $1.4 million addition to the county courthouse headquarters.

The plan would include demolishing the long-vacant former jail on the north side of the building and erecting the addition in its place, a 9,000-square-foot structure that would also include an updated county dispatch office.

Meeting with town and city leaders from across the county, County Commissioners Elmer Berry and Helen Poulin proposed the construction as one possible fix to a sudden courthouse squeeze.

Patrol deputies, detectives, civil process deputies and other Sheriff’s Department staff have been working in the basement of the 19th century building for decades.

That changed on Sept. 29, after county officials led a tour of the basement offices for members of the Lewiston City Council. The musty, damp odor shocked everyone, including commissioners.

Two days later, commissioners ordered the area closed as office space.

Since then, patrol substations were created in Durham, Greene and Poland, and existing offices upstairs have been shuffled to make room.

“I’m in a waiting room and my sergeant is in a supply closet,” Detective Nelson Peters said.

The move was intended as temporary.

The commissioners’ proposal was meant to kick off discussion over the fate of the sheriff’s deputies, Commissioner Helen Poulin said. It did.

Selectmen, councilors and administrators who attended the meeting spent time revisiting the issue of a consolidated dispatch center for the county and Lewiston-Auburn. It’s an issue that has foundered over who would pay the bills.

If the county went forward with the addition, the money would be taken from the budget dip that follows the retirement of a 20-year bond on the county jail, costing more than $445,000 each year.

Using rough estimates, Poulin guessed that a bond on the addition would likely create an annual payment of around $184,000.

Greene Town Manager Charles Noonan warned that taxpayers may not agree with any capital plan to spend more than a million dollars.

“This is a bad time for citizens,” Noonan said. “It really is.”

Commissioners agreed to create a committee that will look into the issue further, potentially hiring dispatch services from the state or renting office space from the city of Auburn.

Berry vowed to keep the conversation swift.

“I don’t want this to take months and months,” he said.