The group studying countywide emergency dispatch services will try to find a workable model one more time, despite being warned off by county commissioners.

“Everyone is pretty comfortable with the work we’ve done so far,” said Jim Bennett, Lewiston city administrator and co-chairman of the County Dispatch Committee. “What we’re doing now is trying to see if we can come up with some different ways to divide up the costs, one that everyone can live with.”

Androscoggin County commissioners sent a letter to the dispatch committee Thursday thanking them for their work and asking the group to release their findings by the end of April. Commissioners also asked the group to host at least one last public meeting at the county building to discuss their findings.

The group was created by the county in January 2007 to study ways to combine services and trim costs.

Androscoggin County has two dispatch centers, Lewiston-Auburn 911 and the Sheriff’s Department. All 911 calls in the county go to one of those agencies first and are forwarded to local emergency dispatch services.

Combined, county communities spend about $2.6 million annually for dispatch services. A series of upgrades proposed for Androscoggin County’s dispatch service would cost about $400,000 for equipment, adding another $55,000 a year to the budget.

The committee released a report in July showing that a unified dispatch center would cost about $38,000 less per year. But members could never settle on a way to share those savings among the communities. Using population or property values to share costs increased the price for the rural communities while giving a break to the more urban areas. Dividing costs by the number of 911 calls reduced costs for Auburn, Lisbon and Livermore Falls but increased them for everyone else.

The group tried to drum up support for the plan last summer, finally meeting in September. Most of the representatives from the smaller towns refused the idea.

“We’re still trying to come up with something that would be a bit more palatable to everyone,” Bennett said. “We just want to see if there is a way we can make this work.”

One being considered to is to offer basic services for all towns, but charge more for premium services.

“We know some towns include their public works departments in their dispatch, while some have their own rescue services,” he said. “So we’re looking at what services towns are getting and how that’s different between them and what they might be willing to pay for that.”

The group is scheduled to meet Feb. 5.