AUBURN — The Androscoggin County Commission on Wednesday approved a public safety answering point and emergency dispatch services contract with the towns of Sabattus and Wales.

Once the documents are signed by the towns, the PSAP contracts will be in effect beginning July 1, 2016, and will continue through June 30, 2019.

Sabattus and Wales are the second and third towns to have recently switched their PSAP and dispatch services to the county after Greene successfully made the switch.

The agreement calls for the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office’s communication center to provide the facilities, equipment and personnel to answer all emergency and non-emergency calls for service.

For Sabattus, the communications center will provide PSAP and dispatch services for police, fire and rescue services, while Wales, without a police department, will receive services for fire and rescue.

The contracts for the two towns will add a total of $173,384 to the county coffers over the next three years.

The county will have some added costs to upgrade its systems.

Records management for Sabattus and Wales will be provided by Lewiston-Auburn 911 communications system, which already provides records-management services for the Sheriff’s Office.

While the county’s communication center likely will handle the extra call volume without additional staff, the county will likely face some upfront costs to upgrade radio communication in the county.

A Homeland Security grant of nearly $21,000 will help offset some of the costs.

Sheriff Eric Samson said it is a huge benefit to work with L-A 911 to provide a records-management system for the towns instead of investing in its own system, which one estimate said could cost more than $200,000 for the required hardware and software.

In other business Wednesday, commissioners voted 6-0 (Chairman Ronald Chicoine was absent) to support using average daily population of inmates at the county jails to determine how funds are disbursed if the Legislature overrides Gov. Paul LePage’s veto of the $2.4 million supplemental funding bill.

Commissioners were concerned that some other method might be used that would reward some less frugal counties for extra spending for improvements that Androscoggin County has cut from previous budgets.

Samson used examples such as not replacing two transport vans with more than 150,000 miles on each and not paving the parking lots, while hearing reports of other counties repaving their lots.

Commissioners felt strongly that using average daily population was a fairer method to divide up the $2.4 million for the state’s 15 county jails.

The Legislature is expected to vote on whether to override the governor’s vetoes Friday.

ssherlock@sunjournal.com

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