AUBURN – Perplexing. Foolish. A terrible thing for people and businesses. A waste for a city in dire need. Sad.

These were among the responses of local businesspeople and members of the Citizens Commission on Lewiston-Auburn Cooperation to Monday’s decision by the Auburn City Council to end the work of that citizen group.

The commission, operating with a state grant, has spent the past two years researching ways for Lewiston and Auburn to join or share services by cooperating to save money and increase efficiency. The work could have served as a model of partnership for Maine’s cities and towns, but advocates for shared services say the council looted and burned those efforts.

“It was pure folly,” said Auburn businessman Jim Wellehan, who served as a member of the committee. “Everyone has a lot to lose by stopping it.”

City officials argued with the commission’s projected savings and said they were tired of reports that triggered few changes.

“We’ve had reports for years, but every council has done nothing about it, including this one,” Auburn Mayor John Jenkins said.

Commission Co-chairwoman Bette Swett-Thibeault said the Auburn council “didn’t really work with us. I don’t believe that they spent the time needed to be spent in order to understand what we were doing.”

The commission had looked for cost savings since it was formed in 2007, the result of a previous two-year effort by the Lewiston-Auburn Commission on Joint Services. Members argued that millions of dollars could be saved by merging some departments in Lewiston and Auburn.

“I just think it’s so against the interest of the citizens of Auburn and the citizens of both (cities),” said Maine supreme court Justice Robert Clifford, who co-chaired an earlier commission and watched portions of Monday’s meeting on TV.

“In these times, I just don’t understand how they can just dismiss it and the reasons they gave were just so weak and so meaningless,” Clifford said.

It’s a sentiment that echoed Tuesday in Augusta.

If there was ever a time for cities to take advantage of possible savings, it would be now, said David Farmer, Gov. John Baldacci’s deputy chief of staff.

Maine cities and towns will lose $27 million in revenue-sharing money over the next two years. Some of those losses will happen in Lewiston-Auburn, Farmer said.

“You are talking real money,” Farmer said. “We can’t continue to have business as usual.”

The commission estimated annual savings from sharing some services between the two cities at $750,000 to $1 million. Consolidation efforts have always been about money.

In 1996, mayors on both sides of the Androscoggin River convened the 19-member L-A Together. After taking 10 months, that group’s recommendations ranged from drawing up lists of joint capital projects every year to formally agreeing that whoever’s closer fights fires first, regardless of location.

Few of the recommendations were followed.

Then-Gov. Angus King encouraged the cities to keep at it.

“I’m disappointed because I think Maine has to start doing these kind of things. We can no longer afford redundancy in government,” King said Tuesday.

At also hurts because Lewiston and Auburn had been seen as leaders in cooperative efforts to save taxpayer money, King said.

Cooperation was a Lewiston-Auburn buzzword by 2004, when the cities were led by brother mayors Normand and Lionel Guay. On their own initiative, the pair created a committee of 10 residents to comb the books to find ways to link more of the two cities’ services for savings or efficiencies.

A year later, they were honored with the Maine State Chamber of Commerce’s President’s Award for their efforts. Their work led to a 2006 study, which called for combined police, public works and back office operations by 2011. It also called for a permanent commission, with a staff coordinator, to guide cooperative efforts.

The Citizens Initiative on Joint Services began its work in 2007.

“There’s a great deal of good work that’s been done, not just by this commission, but by others in this field locally,” said Peter Garcia, who chairs the commission with Swett-Thibeault. “I continue to have hope that the solid public support for cooperation will eventually find its way into the council chambers and be implemented.”

He is committed to pursuing cost savings through shared services, but “the elected leaders of the community have decided they want to take a different direction,” he said. “That’s their job to decide what the direction should be. I’m a little disappointed they didn’t say that two years ago, but it is their prerogative.”

Lewiston and Auburn have received $197,916 in state grants to study consolidation. A portion still rests in the hands of the commission.

“We have bills still to pay and who’s going to pay them?” Swett-Thibeault asked. “I wonder if the state will ever be kind enough to give us money to do other projects. This was an implementation grant, and we didn’t implement anything.”

Jenkins thanked members for their work and promised that the most-recent recommendations of the commission would not be forgotten.

He also said savings could be found without a commission. After all, joint purchasing in Lewiston-Auburn goes back to 1976. The cities share water, trash collection, rock salt, a bus line, an airport and a business park.

Commission members said they were worried their report might end up on shelves and in filing cabinets, unread and unused.

Clifford called the council’s decision “insulting” to commission members who had no opportunity to lobby for their recommendations.

“I have a great sense of waste,” commission member Curtis Webber said of the council decision. “Waste of time. Waste of a lot of money.”

Clifford called the decision to disband the commission “an opportunity missed. It’s a great shame that Lewiston-Auburn will no longer be leaders in this area.”

Webber said he was concerned to see signs of increasing differences of opinion between legislative and administrative people from the city. “It’s a great shame. If that’s correct we’re going in the opposite direction than we should be going – away from cooperation, rather than toward it.”

Lucien Gosselin, president of the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council, also expressed disappointment but hoped the community would not lose track of “the fact that we have done more in terms of intergovernmental services than many places in the country and these are not in jeopardy. They are not challenged, but it certainly is challenging to take to the next level and focus on core public services.”

Commission members insisted that targeted moves, such as merging assessing departments, would have worked.

“This could have been a step toward a stronger economy, a slightly more prosperous group of citizens and a move toward L-A having the best education system in Maine,” Wellehan said. “I am dumbfounded.”

Commission Co-Chairman Garcia said he was optimistic about the good work that has been done.

“I continue to have hope that the solid public support for cooperation will eventually find its way into the council chambers and be implemented,” he said.

Ron Bissonnette of Lewiston, who served on the last two commissions, hoped recommendations would surface again.

“The people on the Auburn council are good people,” he said. “They’re wonderful, dedicated people who really have the best interest in their city at heart. Maybe with us out of the picture, there may be less rhetoric.”

Garcia, Swett-Thibeault and others promised to watch the progress of the Auburn councilors, after having been assured by Jenkins and individual councilors that they intend to pursue shared services.

Editors Scott Thistle, Mark Mogensen and Judith Meyer contributed to this report.