AUGUSTA – The state has set aside $1 million under a new program for communities to consolidate services or form plans to consolidate, and now that the application deadline has passed, the governor is announcing three times that amount has been requested.

Nearly 100 cities and towns in Maine joined forces with police and fire departments, counties, schools and other entities to apply for the funds and, in turn, try to deliver local services more efficiently and at a lower costs to taxpayers.

“We are delighted with the number and range of proposals,” Laurie Lachance, president of the Maine Development Foundation, said in a recent press release. “They demonstrate that not only are towns eager to work together, but also that we can learn from one another.”

Applications from across the state were sent to the Maine Development Foundation, which is administering the new grant program, requesting more than $3 million in funding to consolidate local services.

The 41 grant proposals included requests to regionalize dispatch centers, form joint fire services and create regional purchasing collaborations, along with sharing accounting and assessing services, consolidating water and wastewater treatment plants and trash and recycling facilities.

“Individually, municipalities are not wasteful, but 495 separate units of government, each deciding to build a new school or new public safety building, a few miles apart, or to have single-town dispatch or assessment services does not make sense,” Gov. John Baldacci stated in a press release. “Working together, there are more opportunities to avoid duplications and take advantage of economies of scale.”

Communities from Fort Kent to York applied for the funding in early January and will find out if they have been awarded the money in March.

Individual planning grants can be as much as $10,000 and implementation grants cannot exceed $200,000, under the program.

Most of the communities that applied for funds did it only once, but there are exceptions, including Pittsfield, which applied for three, Town Manager Kathryn Ruth said Friday.

Two of the three Pittsfield applications are to improve recycling and solid waste disposal services.

In one application, Pittsfield, in partnership with the communities of Canaan, Detroit, Hartland, Palmyra, Plymouth and Solon, is seeking $160,000 to provide new equipment and infrastructure improvements to Pittsfield’s recycling center.

Those upgrades would improve the efficiency of the current facility and double productivity, allowing more communities to participate, Ruth said.

The second Pittsfield application is for a $4,700 planning grant to study whether purchasing a regional recycling truck would save money.

“Those changes will make us more efficient and require less labor costs,” the town manager said.

The remaining application is for planning funds to create a $1,638 community network among area towns.

“Those are all wonderful things for getting everybody together to save money,” Ruth said. “This is a win-win situation for everybody. We’re very pleased the governor offered these grants.”

Augusta, Lewiston, Yarmouth, Oakland and Norway each applied for two different grants under new program, with too many partners to list.

The list of applicants for the regionalization money includes several partnerships between police and fire departments, including one that Brewer submitted with Holden, Eddington and Veazie to create regional fire service. The planning grant application is for $10,000.

Brewer also is a co-applicant with Veazie, several other communities, the University of Maine and the Maine National Guard in Bangor to implement a group-purchasing alliance and is a partner with Hermon, Penobscot and Piscataquis counties and Penobscot Valley Council of Governments members for a storm water project.

Several schools and school districts in Portland and communities in Kennebec County applied for grants, but no applications were received from schools in central or northern Maine, according to Amanda Rogers, the Maine Development Foundation’s administrator.

Baldacci initiated the grant program in early 2004 with LD 1930, “An Act to Promote Intergovernmental Cooperation, Costs Savings and Efficiencies,” which became law in May.

The grants will be funded by the state through the Fund for the Efficient Delivery of Local and Regional Services and will be judged based on whether they create cooperation, reduce property taxes and can be successful.

A panel made up of members from Maine State Planning Office, the Department of Administrative and Financial Services and the state tax assessor, along with three municipal officials who have already successfully engaged in regionalization efforts, will review the applications.

The grants will be announced on March 15.

“Projects funded will need to demonstrate significant savings in the cost of delivering local and regional government services and to serve as models from which other Maine communities may learn and follow,” Baldacci’s press release states.