CAMDEN — Upon the urging of the public and following several board discussions, the School Administrative District 28 Board of Directors voted unanimously March 21 to pursue live-streaming their public meetings. Just the week prior, several of the same board members who sit on the Five Town CSD School Board had voted against a similar proposal.

But at the March 21 SAD 28 meeting, board member Peter Orne made a motion for the school board to pursue live-streaming public meetings and to authorize the superintendent to initiate a request for proposals to execute the decision. 

Live-streaming, as proposed, would allow the board to record and archive its meetings, as well as allow the public to watch the recordings live via internet. The proposal would also allow the public to ask questions and engage with the board while streaming is underway.

SAD 28 governs Camden-Rockport K-8 schools while the CSD board, consisting of representatives from Appleton, Camden, Hope, Linconville and Rockport, governs Camden Hills Regional High School.

The discussions about televising or streaming meetings has been an agenda topic since September 2017, when the SAD 28 board agreed to pilot its October board meeting at the Rockport Opera House as pilot experiment and use the streaming system there. 

The March 21 vote followed a presentation by Rockport resident Geoffrey Parker, who had approached the Five Town CSD board last week with a similar proposal to purchase and set up a system for the school districts jointly share. Parker owns Chromunique Audio Visual company in Rockport.

“In my mind and experience, the more you easily communicate with your constituents the more they are informed and applaud what you are doing, or buttonhole you in Hannaford and tell you otherwise,” said Parker, himself a former Rockport Select Board member, Five Town CSD and SAD 28 board member, and who served on the Rockport Zoning Board of Appeals.

Last winter, Rockport dedicated the Geoffrey C. Parker Meeting Room at the Rockport Opera House to him after he upgraded the video and live-stream capabilities there, and instructed municipal boards and committees on how to interact with viewers who were watching proceedings from their home or work computers and not attending the meetings in progress. 

Parker told the SAD 28 board that its school board meetings held at the Rockport Opera House during the winter to take advantage of the live-stream capabilities had generated wide public interest.

He reported that 250 people viewed the last two SAD 28 board meetings held at the Rockport Opera House, and the biggest viewership ever was the Dec. 20, 2017 SAD 28 board meeting that drew 421 people to watch either as the meeting was in progress, or after, as it sat in the archives.

“That’s people who heard about something happening [and log in] so they could experience itself,” he said. “To me, that’s the most honest way of communication.”

At their March 21 meeting, SAD 28 board members went around the table expressing their sentiments about streaming meetings while they sat in the Washington Street Meeting Room, at the Camden Town Office, for a regularly scheduled meeting.

The board had relocated its meeting just two days prior from its normal meeting space in the atrium at the Camden-Rockport Elementary School on Route 90 in Rockport to make use of Camden’s live-stream equipment. The updated notice about the meeting location circulated said:  “After further review of the agenda for the SAD Board Meeting scheduled for tomorrow night, it was determined that this meeting should be livestreamed.”

At the SAD 28 meeting, board members referenced the March 15 CSD meeting, at which the Five Town board had split its opinion on the live-stream system proposal that Parker had introduced there, voting down a similar motion to circulate RFPs by 5 to 3.

Some voted against it because of the cost ($25,000 for the CSD and $25,000 for SAD 28), while others questioned the level of public interest in streaming, according to the minutes from that meeting.

At the SAD 28 meeting, board member Peter Orne simplified the issue and said there are two main questions: “Does the board want to pursue live streaming our meetings, yes or no. The second part is, if yes, what level do we want to fund it. The third question [relates to] the what to do and how to do it.”

Chairman Matt Dailey said: “If it were no cost, I’m sure everybody would say let’s do it.” 

Board member Carole Gartley cited the sentiment that staff and board wanted to involve the community more in the schools. Live-streaming meetings was one way to do so, she said.

“We want to be at our schools and have meetings, and invite the public to schools,” said Gartley. 

The cost of a portable live-streaming system for SAD 28, according to Parker, is $25,000.

“I think we have seen by the experiment it really doesn’t,” she said. “The questions are, how much to pay and how valuable is it?”

She referenced the March 15 CSD debate, which raised the questions, how much is it worth and how much do you gain from it?

Parker said the cost of enabling live stream capabilities for SAD 28 would add a .11 percent increase to property taxes on the Camden and Rockport, or 25 cents for each household, per year.

“You do a great job of educating students and hiring teachers,” he said.

But, he added, in order to communicate effectively with the community at large — those taxpayers who are funding the schools — “this is the primary tool.”

Currently, live-streaming is increasingly common in municipal government, with Camden, Rockport, Rockland and Belfast streaming their meetings via the internet.

In the end, the board voted unanimously to pursue streaming public meetings and authorized Superintendent Maria Libby to circulate requests for proposals.

The $25,000 expenditure is included in the proposed SAD 28 2018-2019 budget, which was also discussed March 21. A public informational meeting about the budget is scheduled for March 26, 6 to 7 p.m., in the Camden Hills Regional High school lecture hall.

Click here to see the proposed budget.  

Reach Editorial Director Lynda Clancy at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657