LEWISTON — The Lewiston and Auburn city councils need to meet again this summer to figure out funding for Lewiston-Auburn 911, Lewiston officials said Tuesday.
Lewiston City Administrator Ed Barrett told city councilors that he sent a memo to Auburn officials on Monday about dispatch-radio system repairs, an agency fund balance and other funding issues.
Auburn councilors did not discuss the matter at Monday’s meeting, and Barrett said he has not heard from Auburn officials.
“I think we need to spend more time explaining the capital issues with both councils,” Barrett said. “We need to understand what’s needed, the implications of doing nothing, the costs and the whole fund balance issue.”
The Auburn City Council is expected to vote on its fiscal year 2016-17 budget on June 20.
Last week, Lewiston and Auburn city councils directed their staff to meet so they could discuss what to do with L-A 911’s fund balance and how to fund capital projects — such as paying to replace aging radios — in the future.
Auburn councilors favored liquidating the agency’s fund balance, estimated to be about $219,000. That could be divided in half and given to each city to reduce property taxes, Auburn Mayor Jonathan LaBonte proposed.
Barrett said that as of Tuesday, the fund balance was about $180,000 — smaller than he expected Monday when he wrote his memo.
He suggested three scenarios:
• Use the balance to pay for pressing repairs;
• Split the balance evenly and put Lewiston’s share into a city fund to pay for future repairs; or
• Use Lewiston’s share to lower the tax rate.
The third option would reduce individual tax bills by about $5.60 in Lewiston, Barrett said.
“I suspect we’ll have to decide what to do pretty quickly if Auburn adopts their budget on June 20th,” he said.
Lewiston councilors said they need to work with Auburn.
“We absolutely need to have another joint meeting,” Councilor Kristen Cloutier said. “I don’t have all the information I need to give you guidance if any of this is a good idea or not.”
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.