BANGOR – A plan to move the city’s emergency dispatching services to a regional center ran into a skeptical City Council Monday night.

With dozens of doubtful fire and police workers sitting silently in the council chambers, Penobscot Regional Communication Center director Cliff Wells briefed the council’s Strategic Issues Committee on the potential benefits – not the least of which is an annual savings of about $200,000 – of redirecting the city’s fire and police emergency calls to the regional dispatch center.

The debate is a familiar one, with towns throughout the state weighing the potential financial savings against local control issues and the comfort of knowing there is always someone at the police station.

After what is likely to be months of study, city officials said, the full council would have to approve any change in dispatching services.

But faced with last week’s Penobscot County Budget Committee’s 6-5 decision to roll the county dispatch costs into the county budget – thus charging a community for the service regardless of whether it uses it – the city is forced to take a hard look at switching, councilors said.

But dollars wouldn’t be the only factor, according to City Councilor Joseph Baldacci.

“We not only have to look at the cost, but the quality of the service and our priority is to ensure the public safety of the people of Bangor,” he said after the meeting.

Bangor Police Chief Donald Winslow said he also had concerns about the county’s decision, which he said put his dispatchers at a disadvantage.

“I will put my dispatchers against any in the state in terms of service and quality,” Winslow said. “But because of what the county did last week, they’ve made it so we’re no longer playing on the level field in terms of cost.”

Bangor’s emergency dispatching services cost about $420,000 a year, Winslow said.

Wells, in addressing concerns that the change would direct calls to dispatchers less familiar with the city, said the importance of his staff’s knowledge of the area was secondary to that of the police and fire crews responding to an emergency.

“That argument might work well in Orono or Medway or Dexter,” Wells said during the Monday proceedings, which resembled a Senate hearing with Wells seated alone at a table before the council committee. “But many of my dispatchers live in Bangor.”

Bangor is one of three municipalities in the county – Lincoln and Old Town being the others – not yet to sign on to the regional service. The Maine State Police also answers its own calls.

If Bangor were to join the countywide service it would be the largest community in the state to do so. In Cumberland County, Portland maintains its own emergency dispatch center. In Androscoggin County, Lewiston and neighboring Auburn share services.

Wells said that if the three remaining Penobscot County communities were to come on board, he would add 10 dispatchers to the 12 positions already in the center’s $1.1-million budget for next year.

Some on the council wanted assurances that Bangor dispatchers would have jobs at the county center should the city make the switch.

“We are not going to go over to this if these people are going to lose their jobs,” Baldacci said after the meeting.