AUBURN —  Androscoggin County commissioners hope to settle the question of who answers calls for help.

The three-member group, including newly appointed commissioner Beth Bell, plans to meet Wednesday with the leaders of the country-run dispatch center. And on Feb. 1 and 8, the group has scheduled visits to Lewiston-Auburn 911 and Lisbon’s dispatch center.

With the visits and a new strategy for looking at the services offered — dividing the services that the county must provide and those it chooses to perform — a solution for the yearslong dispatching debate could come as soon as the end of July, Commissioner Elaine Makas said Monday.

“I think it’s highly resolvable,” Makas said.

That would be a big shift. Several different study groups have formed over the last decade, all with the idea of combining Lewiston-Auburn 911, which handles calls in the cities and Poland, and the county dispatch center, which handles calls from the rest of the county’s 14 municipalities. A 2010 agreement to merge the two entities fell apart when state money dried up. Local leaders have grown frustrated by the commission’s continued discussion.

Makas’ strategy divides dispatching services into four groups. The first are required, dispatching the counties’ own patrol deputies, civil process servers and jail transportation officers. Maine statute requires the county to do the jobs and radio communication is needed.

The other services are all elective.

The second group looks at the county dispatch center’s role as a Public Service Answering Point, or PSAP. For the past decade, land line 9-1-1 calls from anywhere in Androscoggin County except Lewiston-Auburn all go to the county dispatch center. The designation as a PSAP gives the county equipment that allows instant identification of the caller’s address. It comes with a commitment to train, perform and audit Emergency Medical Dispatching, which is a service that gives instruction to people in cases where the caller or someone else is hurt. It also forces the center to have at least two dispatchers on duty at all times.

The third group is fire dispatching.

For a fee of $27 per call, the county dispatches fire calls to Greene, Durham, Turner, Livermore, Livermore Falls, Mechanic Falls and Minot.

The last group is police dispatching. The county center dispatches for the Mechanic Falls, Sabattus and Livermore Falls police departments.

Sheriff Guy Desjardins and county patrol Capt. Raymond Lafrance, who oversees dispatching, said Monday that they are ready to change, but they need direction from the commission one what they see as county’s core services.

Take away duties and they will adjust, Lafrance said.

But they need a decision soon. In part, that’s due to the need to update antiquated equipment. But there is also frustration felt by the dispatchers themselves. They don’t know what is happening to their jobs.

Two of the county’s eight positions are open. One dispatcher left to take a job in Bangor and another is switching positions within the department. Job security was at least partly to blame, Lafrance said.

Solving the dispatching issue is the No. 1 job of commissioners now, Makas said.

Chairman Randall Greenwood was unavailable for comment Monday.

Commissioner Beth Bell, who was sworn in last month, said she too hopes the issue will be remedied soon, but she has few solutions.

“I am still in information gathering mode,” she said.

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