AUBURN — Too many people with different goals — like dissonant voices singing competing melodies — make only noise, say county commissioners.

On Wednesday, commissioners Jonathan LaBonte and Randall Greenwood defended their choices for an 11-member communications committee that left out several of Androscoggin County’s 14 towns. They insisted that more committee members would have doomed the group’s aim of planning a new county dispatch center.

“I wanted to move quickly,” LaBonte said. “It wasn’t meant as a slight. The approach of giving every town a seat has been tried twice and it failed twice.”

On Tuesday, Chairman Greenwood, a former Greene selectman, drew criticism from his old board over his town’s lack of representation on the new committee. At Wednesday’s commission meeting, Sabattus Selectman Mark Duquette levied a similar criticism. 

“Sabattus was quite upset that we weren’t on this,” Duquette said.

He asked the commissioners to add someone from his town. They didn’t.

“Right now, we have no say whatsoever,” Duquette said.

Commissioners created the new committee on Sept. 30. Prior groups had been asked to come up with a plan for consolidating dispatch services throughout the county. Those talks broke down over who would pay for a new center.

The new group’s charge was more focused: Come up with a modernization plan for the county’s old dispatch system. It also came with a tight schedule; commissioners want a report by Dec. 11.

The report is supposed to include full costs for equipment, a look at needs for space, a budget and a new structure that would create a new county department, breaking dispatch services away from the Sheriff’s Department.

The appointed committee includes Sheriff Guy Desjardins; Joanne Potvin, the director of Androscoggin Unified EMA; fire chiefs in Poland, Turner, Durham and Lewiston; and the police chiefs in Auburn, Mechanic Falls, Lisbon and Livermore Falls. LaBonte is also a member.

Sabattus Police Chief Thomas Fales attended the meeting and will attend the rest of them, Duquette said. “But it’s not the same as being part of the committee.”

LaBonte insisted that the committee could be created no other way. And he and Greenwood insisted that people who attend the meetings will have a chance to give their opinions.

“This is about modernizing our facility,” LaBonte said. “At the end of the day, we are not going to make everybody happy.”

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