HAMPDEN, Maine — Get the popcorn ready: Residents of Hampden and other Regional School Unit 22 towns will be able to watch school committee meetings in the year ahead as the result of town councilors’ unanimous vote last week to continue a broadcasting program.
The town began taping and broadcasting RSU 22 meetings last spring but only did so for the budget meetings. As it turned out, the budget meetings had “exponentially” more YouTube views than those of the Town Council, Town Manager Susan Lessard noted during a council meeting last week.
Mayor Carol Duprey offered the following view totals for the four school budget meetings shown on YouTube: April 9, 311 views; April 16, 691 views; April 30, 76 views; and May 1, 520 views.
In contrast, a council budget meeting on May 7 had 42 views. A look at Hampden council meeting YouTube views for the months of April through August show a range of five views to 46.
“So the people are watching the school board meetings,” Duprey said.
YouTube view totals, however, don’t tell the whole story, Councilor Jean Lawlis noted.
That’s because the council’s meetings are broadcast live over the town’s local government cable access station, Time Warner Channel 7, and there isn’t an easy way to count how many are watching. Lessard said there are 1,391 cable subscribers in town.
In addition, council meetings are streamed live over the Internet via Ustream.tv, which as of this week showed 107 views and three followers.
Likely driving up the RSU budget meeting viewing numbers is the fact that they can be seen by residents of Winterport, Newburgh and Frankfort — the RSU’s other member towns.
“So we don’t really know how many people are watching,” Lawlis said.
The council’s initial decision to videotape school board meetings was made during a March 17 meeting. In favor of the measure were Duprey and council members Ivan McPike, David Ryder and Greg Sirois, while members Thomas Brann, Lawlis and William Shakespeare voted against it.
During the last fiscal year, which ended on June 30, the town covered the roughly $50 per-meeting cost of having a videographer tape and process the school board’s meetings footage, with money from its communication budget, which is funded partly through local tax dollars and the proceeds of the town’s franchise agreement with Time Warner Cable, which generates about $30,000 a year in revenue.
Town councilors discussed the merits of videotaping school board meetings as part of an overall goal to make local government more transparent to the public during a February goal-setting session. A majority agreed to move forward on the concept.
“I’m kind of taken back by the views. People are watching,” said Shakespeare, who opposed the measure last spring. While he agreed that showing school board meetings made for a more informed public, he was not sure it would make much of a difference in terms of school officials’ decision making.
McPike, however, said the broadcast of school budget meetings could be a reason for an uptick in interest in RSU board seats up for grabs in November. This year, there is a five-way race for three three-year seats and two people running for an unexpired position. Last year, there were two candidates for two three-year posts.
Sirios added he increasingly hears the school budget discussed in the community and attributes that to the budget meeting coverage and the town’s informational budget mailings.
“So there is an awareness of this,” he said. While he agreed with that this might not immediately result in lower education costs, his hope is that there will be change.
“To see an increase of over $2 million since 2009 to educate 40 less students, there is something wrong there,” he said.
Lawlis had a different take on the numbers. She said that even though the budget meetings were broadcast, the school budget passed by a healthy margin.
While some councilors and a resident thought the taping should be limited to RSU budget meetings, Ryder argued that at a cost of about $1,300 for the year, “If you got to see every meeting, you’d know what was coming down the pike” before budget decision were final.