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LEWISTON — Androscoggin County commissioners ended a decade of debate Wednesday, voting 2-1 to maintain the ability to answer emergency calls and dispatch help in a county-run communications center.
All three commissioners — Beth Bell, Elaine Makas and Chairman Randall Greenwood — argued that citizens are safer when both jobs are done at a central communications hub. Together, they rejected a plan by the town of Lisbon that would have closed the county's communication center, sent its dispatching to the Lisbon center and sent the call-answering function to one of the state's Public Safety Answering Points, known as PSAPs. The plan, based on savings forecasts by officials in Lisbon, was widely endorsed by the county's small towns, including Greene, Sabattus and Durham.
Lisbon Town Council Chairman Fern Larochelle called it "a heck of a plan." "It was a plan that not only saved the other communities money, but also, for the first time, showed savings for Lewiston-Auburn over a long period of time," Larochelle said.
Commissioners said they didn't agree with Lisbon's numbers and worried about the transfer of calls it would create.Continue reading more.
http://www.sunjournal.com/news/lewiston-auburn/2012/05/18/androscoggin-county-commission-votes-preserve-coun/1197378
2 comments:
I want to commend the Commissioners for utilizing common sense in their decision to preserve county dispatching. I know there was a great deal of political pressure being placed on them and instead of buckling under stood firm and put what is best for the County first. I only wish the town of Lisbon had the same leadership. The Commissioners saw right through Brooks’s proposal and realize his numbers were nowhere close to accurate. I only hope Michael Bowie doesn’t try to sabotage this decision with the Androscoggin County Budget Committee. It is the right decision and all the towns should be supporting this decision.
Im glad to see that the county commissioners have put the best interest of the county ahead of politics. This must have been a tough decision with all the pressure to moving the dispatch to Lisbon. The math doesn’t lie. The numbers just don’t add up. Its time to get rid of Lisbon dispatch and save the town $500,000 a year. We dont need to spend half a million dollars a year to have another dispatch layer and slow the dispatch times.... This could be a life and death matter.
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