AUBURN — A county plan to save Lewiston and Auburn taxpayers about $66,000 may fail because some say it doesn’t save enough money.

The three-member Androscoggin County Commission voted Wednesday to create a new system of fees to force the county’s 12 small towns to pay for answering and dispatching emergency calls.

The two cities already spend $2 million a year to fund both services through Lewiston-Auburn 911.

Auburn Mayor Jonathan LaBonte said Friday that the rates are set artificially low, forcing the the cities to continue paying for county services they do not use.

“The savings are not adequate,” said LaBonte, who was a county commissioner for two years before he was elected mayor in November 2011. “The commissioners are in over their heads on this.”

The county leaders don’t know what it costs to deliver the individual services, so they cannot create a fair fee, he said.

“Our period of subsidizing this system is over,” he said.

He’s not alone in his concern.

Auburn police Chief Phil Crowell questioned the validity of numbers at Wedensday’s meeting. And on Friday, Auburn City Manager Clint Deschene also said he believes the rate is too low.

The plan calls for per-capita fees to be charged to the towns: $2 per person in the community for answering the calls, $6.15 per person for dispatching a town police department and $2.50 per person for dispatching rescue and fire services.

Lewiston and Auburn would still pay a substantial share of the county’s total dispatching costs — about $118,000 in Lewiston and $101,000 in Auburn — but nearly one-third of the $600,000 total would be raised by fees.

The rates are not a certainty, though.

The 12 affected towns each must approve the plan for it to move forward. They have the right to contract with dispatching offices elsewhere for most services.

The county Budget Committee, which is slated to begin its work on the 2013 budget in early November, must also approve the rates.

And, Lewiston and Auburn could sue.

“If these fees are accepted, we’ll do whatever is necessary,” LaBonte said Friday.

He and Deschene plan to talk with the Auburn City Council about the matter.

Similar discussions are planned in Lewiston, City Administrator Ed Barrett said Friday. He declined to say whether the fees seemed reasonable.

Like Crowell and others, he did say he wishes a cost analysis had been done.

However, too many analyses have already examined dispatching in the issue’s years-long debate, said Elaine Makas, who represents Lewiston on the County Commission.

“I’m sick of analyzing this stuff to death,” Makas said. “Auburn is saving $31,000, and Lewiston is saving $36,000 a year. That’s not chicken feed. I think the people of Lewiston and Auburn will be quite satisfied with that. We’ve been overpaying for 30 years.”

Randall Greenwood, the commission’s chairman, said he, too, is hopeful that the savings will be enough for the cities.

He believes the numbers are fair, particularly since Lewiston-Auburn 911 had forwarded a plan to take over the county’s call answering and dispatching for a charge of $515,000.

When you subtract the revenue raised by fees, county taxes would pay about $400,000 for the service.

“That’s certainly lower,” Greenwood said. “That’s a net savings for everybody by having the county continue to do the service.”

On Wednesday, Sheriff Guy Desjardins implored commissioners to act, at least giving the towns the chance to weigh in on the rate plan. On Thursday, he and Greenwood met with county attorney Bryan Dench to craft a letter to the 12 towns. It was sent Friday.

As towns respond, the ongoing debate will hopefully near a conclusion, said Phyllis Gamache Jensen, director of L-A 911.

“I think the commissioners have kicked over the first domino,” she said.

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