LEWISTON — It could take a couple of years for the city to see benefits from a performance measurement project.

Councilors heard a report Tuesday listing some benchmarks for the city’s fire department and the emergency dispatch center it shares with Auburn.

It’s a place to start, according to Deputy Finance Director Heather Hunter.

“If you don’t measure yourself, you don’t know where you stand and you can’t tell if you’re actually improving your service or not,” Hunter said Tuesday. “This gives us some benchmarks, a place to start looking for comparative data.”

It’s part of an effort to look at certain government operations and track their efficiency.

The study is being paid for with grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the new England States Government Finance Officers Association. It brings finance and administrative personnel from seven New England cities to work together and create benchmarks.

The group includes Lewiston, Biddeford and Freeport in Maine as well Holden, Mass., South Burlington, Vt., Mansfield, Conn., and Newport, R.I.

The report should be online at the city’s Web site Wednesday morning.

So far, the study has looked at two areas: emergency services and snow and ice removal. Tuesday, Hunter presented the findings for the fire and dispatch operations and said work on rating the snow and ice clearing work are nearly complete.

According to emergency services findings, the Lewiston-Auburn 911 Center compared well to the other cities, answering 99 percent of dispatch calls within three rings. On average, the other cities answered 94 percent of calls that quickly.

The center also had payroll and benefits, at $52,199 per year, slightly below average compared to the other cities.

Lewiston’s fire department had the largest number of fire calls per month — an average of seven, according to the report. But the city also had the longest mean response time — more than seven minutes. That could show that the city needs to move some of its fire houses, Hunter said.

But councilors worried comparing Lewiston to the other cities wasn’t a good.

“I get the feeling we may be the biggest fish in that pond,” Councilor Denis Theriault said. “I think I’d like to see a bigger sample, with some cities outside of New England that we might have more in common with.”

Hunter said the group plans to continue updating the emergency services and snow removal findings next year and begin working on reviews for two other functions. All four functions would be reviewed again in two years.

“So, we’re really in the infancy of this,” Hunter said. “But in a couple of years, the council may have some really good trends to look at. Then, they may really have to evaluate if we’re doing what we should.”

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