LEWISTON – The drive to create a dispatch hub for all police, fire and rescue calls across Androscoggin County stalled Wednesday.

County commissioners formally disbanded the two-year-old, 17-member group charged with finding a way to bring the county’s towns together in a single plan.

“The struggle was money,” said Minot fire Chief Steve French, who co-chaired the committee with Lewiston City Administrator James Bennett. “I don’t think there was much debate about anything else.”

Money was also at the center of Wednesday’s meeting with the commission.

Until some questions are answered – particularly over the long-standing policy of providing police dispatching to Sabattus and Mechanic Falls – Lewiston will stay out of the discussion, Bennett said.

“You cannot offer a free service to some but not to others,” Bennett said. “I think you guys are in an interesting place unless my entire understanding of the law is lost.”

Lewiston and Auburn pay for county dispatch services through their county tax assessments, but get no county dispatch service for the money.

The commission hasn’t given up on the dispatch issue. It plans to research and hold workshops to further explore the matter, Chairman Randall Greenwood said.

In part, commissioners want to find out how county dispatching came to include calls for Sabattus and Mechanic Falls police.

It isn’t free, Mechanic Falls Town Manager John Hawley insisted.

“It’s been part of our tax assessment,” he said.

Under any of the previous plans, the town would be asked to pay more money.

The dispatch committee had done lots of work, analyzing the way Lewiston-Auburn handles its emergency calls in a center beneath Auburn’s central fire station and comparing the work to the county’s dispatching for the other towns from its outdated center on Turner Street.

After two years of meetings, the group delivered an incomplete report last summer, not answering the question of how a consolidated center would be funded.

In recent weeks, leaders in six towns – Sabattus, Turner, Wales, Mechanic Falls, Leeds and Greene – submitted letters to the county calling for the group to be disbanded.

Wednesday’s vote to disband the group was unanimous.