Auburn Deputy Police Chief Jason Moen, left, and Lewiston Police Chief Brian O’Malley weigh in on a presentation on a new emergency radio system Thursday evening at Lewiston City Hall.

Auburn Mayor Jason Levesque, left, and Lewiston Mayor Shane Bouchard listen to a presentation on a new emergency radio system at Lewiston City Hall on Thursday evening.

LEWISTON — In the reasonably quiet chambers of City Hall on Thursday night, Lewiston-Auburn 911 Director Paul LeClair played a pair of audio clips for the city councils of Lewiston and Auburn.

The first clip featured an emergency call using the VHF radio system used by police and fire departments in the Twin Cities.

The audio was scratchy. Garbled. There was a lot of background noise and the volume was low. It was hard to hear what the 911 dispatcher was trying to relate.

LeClair then played an audio clip of a similar call placed under the 800-megahertz radio system used by only two departments in Maine. That call was crystal clear. You could easily make out individual voices and background noise was pretty much nonexistent.

Lewiston and Auburn police really want to move to the 800-MHz system. Firefighters, too.

The problem? It will cost around $3 million to upgrade the VHF system. To move to 800 MHz, it will cost more than double that.

“I know it’s a huge price tag,” Lewiston Police Chief Brian O’Malley said. “But we’re looking at this as a public safety issue.”

Auburn Deputy Police Chief Jason Moen asked the councils to recall the horrible quality of the VHF calls they had just heard. Now imagine it’s 2 a.m. and you’re a police officer way out on Route 4, he told them. Imagine there’s an emergency going on in the city, but because of the shortcomings of VHF, it’s not always easy for that cop to hear what the emergency is, or where he needs to be.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Moen said, dispatchers lost contact with an Auburn police officer who had run off on a foot chase. The VHF system doesn’t have global positioning capability for hand-held radios, Moen said. The 800-MHz system does.

“It’s an officer safety issue,” the deputy chief said.

Upgrading to the new system is high on the wish list of police and firefighters alike. Many of them attended the Thursday night joint meeting of the councils in uniform to show their support.

One way or another, the 22-year-old system is going to need upgrading, and 911 officials expect to have it done by the summer of 2020. The question of which system is best will have to be decided soon.

“This is obviously a difficult question,” Lewiston City Administrator Edward Barrett said. “It’s a decision that’s got to be a joint decision. I think it’s something we need to stay in close communication about.”

Thursday’s gathering was the first joint council meeting since the highly contentious merger referendum was rejected last year. The meeting was short on drama and long on presentations. While other issues were discussed, the bulk of the night was dedicated to the matter of the emergency radio system upgrade.

A new MHz system, Moen insisted, would present “a plethora of opportunities” for the public safety departments in both cities. The 800 technology is said to have better audio quality, better in-building transmissions and more flexibility.

It also costs twice as much as VHF to maintain and may exclude some mutual aid departments in surrounding towns.

Auburn Mayor Jason Levesque wondered whether emergency transmissions under the 800-MHz system would be available to civilians, like journalists and radio enthusiasts, through store-bought police scanners.

It turns out they would not — 800-MHz emergency transmissions would be encrypted, so anybody outside the local 911 system would not be able to hear the radio traffic.

No decision was made Thursday night. In response to prodding from Levesque, LeClair promised to look into whether there was any state or federal grant money available to help cover the cost of an 800-MHz upgrade.

The councils also heard about a pair of potential railroad projects being studied.

The first project would explore the possibility of a rail-to-trail project, creating paths along railway lines for walking, jogging and biking from downtown Lewiston to Lisbon Falls and beyond.

Former Auburn Councilor Robert Stone, who organized a feasibility study for the project, called the plan “a very nice recreational opportunity” for the area.

“This is totally oriented toward the citizens,” Stone said, “totally oriented toward recreation. It would be a real tourist draw.”

Another potential project is exploring the possibility of using an existing facility in Auburn to attract businesses interested in shipping their products by rail.

“We are very early in the project’s life cycles,” Stone said.

At the end of the Thursday night meeting, councilors also heard from representatives from Auburn’s sports tourism study, the Lewiston-Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce tourism subcommittee, and a regional tourism program of the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments.

The presentations highlighted several initiatives and websites devoted to addressing tourism in the area, including Maine’s Lakes and Mountains and Discover LA Maine.

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