PARIS – Oxford County Sheriff Wayne Gallant told municipal officials and local police Tuesday that the state’s plan to change operation of the county jail would not significantly affect them, but worried that it might be the first step toward more adverse changes.

Gallant said Tuesday that the state appears to be moving closer to a proposed plan to convert the Oxford County Jail to a 72-hour holding facility. Inmates unable to make bail in the first three days of incarceration would be transported to the Androscoggin County Jail if the switch occurs.

The estimated jail population would average four to five prisoners per day, as pretrial and inmates sentenced to longer than three days in jail would no longer be held there.

Gallant said transportation, one of the main concerns under the first state plan that included closing the Oxford County Jail, would be the responsibility of the jail staff rather than local police. He said the only significant change to local police would be the possibility that they would be more involved in processing inmates if jail staff is too busy on site.

“We are no longer going to have a control room,” Gallant said. “We’re going to have to change how we get into the jail.”

Gallant said the change could occur by this summer if approved by state officials. He said its main benefits would include savings on food, medical and utility costs.

However, he also criticized the plan as shifting some costs elsewhere. Gallant said the loss of inmate trustees performing maintenance tasks and longer travel distances for local attorneys to see their clients will put more of a burden on the county and judicial budgets.

“I don’t see where there’s a whole lot of savings,” Gallant said. “What they’ve done is they’ve just cannibalized our jails.”

The change would also reduce the jail staff from 20 to 14. Three vacant positions have been frozen, and three employees would have to be laid off.

“Too many times we get caught up in the numbers and forget these numbers represent real people,” Gallant said.

In 2007, Gov. John Baldacci proposed consolidating the county jail systems and the state prison system into a statewide system managed by the Department of Corrections. He said the annual savings of $10 million in its first year would nearly quadruple to $38 million over time.

While the plan originally called for the Oxford County Jail and four other county jails to close, it was later revised to create a board to oversee the jails, as well as a $1.2 million cap for jail spending.

Prior to the creation of the board, one proposal included the switch to a 72-hour facility by the Oxford County Jail and four other jails. Gallant opposed that plan last year, and he and others worried Tuesday that the suggestion that certain jails close could also resurface in the future.

“If we’re going from boarding 30 or 40 prisoners to boarding five or six or 12 prisoners, how long are you going to leave this place open?” asked Oxford police Chief Jon Tibbetts.

“The state didn’t really have a plan,” said Oxford County Chief Deputy Dane Tripp. “They actually said they had a plan, and then we started doing the work for them. And then they started dictating to us what they wanted done.”