FARMINGTON — Two central Maine counties reached a deal Tuesday to share an emergency dispatch and law enforcement technology, showing how taxpayers can benefit when communities merge certain services, according to county officials.

Franklin County taxpayers will pay about $68,000 per year to Somerset County, where taxpayers have invested more than $1 million in recent years to install the infrastructure needed to support the technology.

The annual payment makes the valuable public safety technology available to residents in the neighboring counties, while avoiding asking taxpayers in both communities to make the same initial investment, according to Larry Post, Somerset County administrator.

It doesn’t cost Somerset taxpayers more money to extend the offer, but it saves Franklin County taxpayers from unnecessarily spending thousands of dollars to get access to the technology, Post said.

Law enforcement officials at the meeting Tuesday described the technology as a computer system that improves everything from police record keeping to emergency dispatch services.

“The way the economy is, and as dollars are stretched tighter, this is going to continue to make more sense in the future,” Post said, referring to sharing services during a phone interview after the meeting.

Franklin commissioners voted unanimously at the meeting to accept the deal. In addition to the annual payment to Somerset, there is a $15,000 one-time payment for fees tied to software licensing, which is based on the number of people using the technology.

At the meeting, Post described the deal as a step toward fostering a collaborative relationship that will continue in other areas to reduce county government spending.

Franklin County Commissioner Gary McGrane echoed Post in praising the agreement as a breakthrough that may result in more services being shared between the counties. The other two commissioners also supported the benefits of the deal.

Somerset will hire a new employee to help with the added workload, with the salary and benefits for the position accounting for nearly the entire annual payment by Franklin taxpayers, according to Peter Smith, director of Technical Services for Somerset County.

The deal is not generating revenues to offset Somerset taxpayers’ previous investment, and is simply paying to extend the service to another county, Smith said. He called it a nice gesture similar to lending a chainsaw to a neighbor.

When Somerset taxpayers started investing in the technology in 2007, there were federal grants that helped but limited options for sharing the costs with other communities, according to Smith.

Although the software was already in place in several public safety agencies in Somerset County — paid for by an almost $500,000 federal grant — the support technology was needed to meet the demands on the system, according to Smith.

“Four years ago we were in this position and we didn’t have anybody reaching out a hand to us,” he said, referring to the reason for Somerset to offer the service to Franklin.

Somerset taxpayers have invested about $1 million in the support technology, which ranges from fiber optic wiring to sophisticated computer servers that process and secure the data, Smith said.

It’s unclear whether Franklin taxpayers would have spent the same amount, according to Smith. But it’s clear the investment may have made the technology unaffordable without the deal, he said.

“These counties have been neighbors for hundreds of years, and there should be cooperation,” Smith said.

The actual computer systems were paid for by a $99,740 federal grant awarded to Franklin County and some other police and fire departments in the county, according to Dennis Noe, a sales representative for the company selling the systems.

The systems give emergency dispatch and law enforcement operations new options to manage records, share data and access communicate electronically via the Internet, said Noe, of California-based TriTech Software-Imc Solutions.

Any agencies statewide that have the same software program can also access records at any time, according to Noe. This enables them, for example, to access arrest records and other information to help with criminal investigations, he said.

Franklin County taxpayers will pay annual maintenance fees for the software, Noe said. There is a $2,730 fee for the system serving the sheriff’s office and a $13,370 fee for the computer-aided dispatch system.

It’s unclear whether the fees will be reduced by sharing the cost with the municipal police and fire departments that currently have the system, according to Noe. The departments will benefit from the county being added to the system, and some fees will likely be spread out among the levels of government, he said.

There are 50 police and fire departments in Maine that have the system, Noe said. Counties that have it are Androscoggin, Kennebec, Lincoln and York.

Most agencies do not share the computer software, however, typically choosing to maintain their own system, Noe said. He said the company is not really affected by communities pooling infrastructure support, which is tied to investments that are separate from his sales.

But the sales representative for the global company supported the idea of communities sharing costs.

“I think it’s a great sharing of resources between both counties, it’s pulling the counties closer together,” Noe said. “It’s not the norm, but hopefully moving forward more counties will be sharing.”

David Robinson — 861-9287

drobinson@centralmaine.com

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