ORRINGTON – After years of discussion and debate, residents will decide next month if they would like the Orrington Volunteer Fire Department and Orrington Volunteer Ambulance Service to combine into one municipal department during a special town meeting.

The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Monday, Aug. 8, at Center Drive School.

Residents will be asked at the special meeting whether “to adopt the fire-rescue ordinance, which will essentially combine the volunteer fire and rescue departments into one municipal department, if it’s passed,” Town Manager Dexter Johnson said Wednesday.

Selectmen set the meeting date on Monday. Town leaders have discussed combining the volunteer departments into one town-run department for more than two years and even approved exploring the creation of a fire and rescue department ordinance in August 2003.

A copy of the proposed ordinance and town warrant is available at the Town Hall and on the town’s Web site at orrington.govoffice.com.

To let residents know about the upcoming special meeting, an information sheet will be sent out by mail, starting at the end of the week.

A presentation on combining the departments will be held before the Aug. 8 vote, which will take place in the gymnasium at Center Drive School.

If the ordinance is passed, residents also will be asked whether $25,000 in undesignated fund balance can be moved to help fund the new department, Johnson said.

“Basically, we’re asking the town to increase the combined budget of the two departments by $25,000,” he said.

At the annual town meeting in June, residents approved $95,134 for the Fire Department budget and $14,890 for the ambulance service.

Under the proposed municipal department, tentatively known as Orrington Fire and Rescue, volunteers would become “call personnel,” be considered town employees and be paid for responding to emergency calls.

The additional $25,000 requested to fund the department would go to pay these “call personnel” and would supplement the fire chief’s salary. Mike Spencer is now the fire chief.

“The original concept was to hire a full-time chief … What we’re going to do for the first year is increase the part-time chief’s pay,” Johnson said.

“I’m not sure if it will stay like that or evolve into a full-time position,” the town manager said later. “We don’t know yet.”

As a municipal department, the one chief would be responsible for personnel, management, training, safety, budgeting, inventory, developing departmental rules, and policies, and would report to the board of selectmen.

At the July 7 selectmen’s meeting, Orrington Ambulance Service Chief Brian Smickle said the added funds were needed to provide an incentive for volunteers to take more shifts instead of taking second jobs.

Selectmen decided in April to suspend ambulance service offered in town by the volunteer ambulance service until enough volunteers can be found to cover all the open shifts.

“It is believed that under this plan, the ambulance coverage will expand to include more hours, which will increase revenues,” an information sheet states. “The revenues, now going to the [ambulance service], would become a source of revenue for the town, which in turn will help fund the services.”

The possibility of joining a regional fire district with Brewer, which was proposed and discussed in recent months, has been put on the shelf for now, Johnson said.

“The investigation into regionalization, while it still has some merits, is [being] set aside right now to create a municipal department under the original concept,” he said.