Auburn’s City Council and mayor seem determined to blow up the bridges between Auburn and Lewiston and have already sent out the sappers to lay the charges.

I don’t recall any of them running for office on a pledge to do this. Nonetheless, the newly elected council has cut off Auburn’s share of funding for the Economic Growth Council and L-A Arts, demanded a reduction in the city’s tab for combined emergency dispatch services, withdrawn from the Lewiston-Auburn Public Health Committee, and cut off cooperation with the Joint Charter Commission’s final-phase study of the potential impact of merging the Twin Cities.

What’s troubling is not just their aggressive dismantling of collaborative arrangements built up over decades but the confrontational tone of how they’re going about it – ranging from prickly to downright rude – apparently to alienate their neighbors across the river and poison public opinion in advance of a referendum to approve or reject a joint charter.

Auburn’s elected officials have baldly asserted that most collaborative activities with Lewiston have failed to produce economic results justifying the bureaucratic expense, that Auburn is carrying too high a proportional share of the costs, and that it can do better on its own by forming ad-hoc bilateral alliances with other communities or by contracting with semi-private organizations for fee-based services.

Auburn Mayor Jonathan Labonte, who fancies himself a planning expert and policy wonk, has provided a philosophical justification for this approach, while Councilors Leroy Walker and Robert Stone have contributed the edgy rhetoric.

On May 16, the City Council passed a resolve barring city employees from performing support activities for the Joint Charter Commission, including “research, information gathering, report preparation and interview participation.” Its rationale was that city staffers were already overburdened with work, but the councilors’ comments suggested a different story.

In discussing the resolution, most Council members had negative things to say about the work of the Commission, and several caustically remarked that public comment and debate about the resolution were a waste of time in light of futility of the merger effort and the long meeting agenda ahead of them.

Councilor Walker followed with a June 4 letter to the editor in which he argued that a merger would “wipe Auburn off the map,” eliminate more than 200 years of its history, force the city to “be taking on the huge welfare and school problems found on the Lewiston side,” and “run the risk of being consistently outvoted on funding, taxes and other major issues.” (By that logic, Walker’s ward of New Auburn, which has its own unique history, should consider seceding from the municipality of Auburn).

Fortunately, Mayor Labonte has given high marks to at least one joint endeavor. In a recent newspaper interview, he described the Lewiston-Auburn Water Pollution Control Authority as a “well-run facility.” I say “fortunately,” because if he’d convinced the Council to sever the relationship, Auburn residents wouldn’t be able to flush their toilets (at least not without violating environmental laws).

In fairness, part of the impetus for defunding joint Lewiston-Auburn agencies has arisen from the need to make hard budget choices in a revenue-strapped environment. It’s easier to cut short-term costs that offer only long-term results. However, as any business school grad can tell you, cost-cutting may help an organization survive but, unless accompanied by a sound strategic growth plan, won’t help it to thrive.

Auburn’s fiscal problems are structural. The city covers too much territory and has too few taxpayers. Its relatively small population, about 23,000, resides in a sprawling geographic land area of almost 60 square miles. That means high per capita costs to protect, maintain and service its roads, buildings and residents. Structural problems call for a strategic solution, and a merger with Auburn’s closest and most comparable neighbor offers a potential solution that deserves careful consideration.

I would expect either a merger or increased collaboration to provide opportunities for savings and improved services through economies of scale and elimination of redundancies in staffing, equipment and physical plant. But I’ll suspend judgment until I see the financial projections and potential scenarios from the Joint Charter Commission.

There’s an additional long-range consideration — demographic trends. Unlike the post-World War II period, which saw a flight from cities to the suburbs, people and businesses are now being drawn back to the cities and particularly towards the country’s largest metropolitan areas. That’s where the bulk of new jobs are being created.

A city needs to reach a critical mass of population to offer the scope and quality of services and amenities that will make it a magnet for what urban planners call the “creative economy.” Portland, the state’s largest city, has achieved that critical mass at only 66,000. An L-A union would be close behind with 60,000.

Auburn’s City Council and mayor have apparently made up their minds about a merger without the benefit of facts. The residents of this community, on the other hand, should keep open minds, await the facts, and cast their ballot for or against merger based on careful consideration of those facts.

Elliott L. Epstein, a local attorney, is founder of Museum L-A . He is the author of “Lucifer’s Child,” a book about the 1984 oven-death murder of Angela Palmer. Epstein also is a volunteer member of the Joint Charter Commission’s workgroup on public works and utilities. He may be reached [email protected].