Analysis predicts savings of $400,000 if countywide dispatch is formed

LEWISTON – Talk of creating a single dispatch center – a hub for all police, fire and rescue calls in Androscoggin County’s 14 towns – turned Thursday to jobs.

In 2005, the county’s public safety agencies drew an estimated 143,000 calls.

A full-time staff of no fewer than 34 people will be needed to handle that volume of calls, said Andy D’Eramo, who runs Lewiston and Auburn dispatch center.

The presentation was made to the Androscoggin County Dispatch Committee, which is hoping to issue a report on consolidation this summer.

The concept of combining dispatching – from D’Eramo’s center in Auburn, the Sheriff’s department, Lisbon and Livermore – has been talked about for years.

That talk picked up last May, when a private consulting firm, SSI, issued a report suggesting that $400,000 could be saved by joining together.

It’s a savings that members of the Dispatch Committee began looking for when they started their meetings last month.

Lewiston City Administrator James Bennett, who leads the 17-member group with Minot Fire Chief Steve French, said Thursday the savings are worth the search.

“It’s $400,000 we can put back into private hands,” he said.

However, specifics on how the consolidation will happen are few.

Committee members say they don’t know who might pay for the talked-about changes or what they will cost.

On Thursday, those changes were limited to the staff, something that the committee already addressed when it was formed. Among its agreed-upon “guiding principals” was a promise that no dispatch workers would lose their jobs because of the consolidation.

Part of that hinges on the uncertainty that comes with merging departments. Perhaps some positions could be cut through attrition, D’Eramo said.

But first, they would need to see how the calls come and whether too many people might have too little work.

Part of the answer lies with the number of calls over past years, but calls for help are hard to predict and often defy patterns.

“With police, you can plot trends,” D’Eramo said. “With fire, you can’t.”