After years of dreaming and discussion, the town of Raymond is about to get its digital broadcast studio.

Through the efforts of Technology Specialist Kevin Woodbrey, Town Manager Don Willard, the Raymond Board of Selectmen and the Raymond taxpayer who approved the expenditure at this summer’s town meeting, plans for the studio will soon reach fruition in a state-of-the-art facility scheduled to open in early 2006 in the portable next to Jordan Small Middle School.

After talking to several companies, the town has selected HB Communications from Connecticut to supply the equipment needed for the project. Woodbrey, who describes the system as “a cable station in a box,” says the equipment they will be using takes the place of multiple racks of hardware and analog stations.

“It allows you to broadcast two channels out over Time Warner and also allows you to record one channel coming in at the same time,” said Woodbrey.

One of the two channels will be designated for government and the other for schools.

This new technology will achieve the town’s goal of keeping Raymond residents more informed and involved in local affairs by making information more accessible to the public. The government channel will air Raymond Board of Selectmen meetings and other local governmental meetings live and again later at various convenient times. It will also broadcast public information videos.

The technology provides the added functions of archiving old meetings and offering Internet users streaming video.

The school channel will have the capability to broadcast athletic games, theater and musical productions and pertinent information relative to Raymond schools. It will also provide middle school students the opportunity to learn firsthand about digital technology, a chance that they might not otherwise have until high school or college.

And, because the equipment will be connected with up to 32 cameras, operators will be able to monitor many areas, such as the cardboard waste bins that have been overflowing in recent years due to misuse. Potentially, this surveillance could even be carried out by the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office or others watching from remote locations.

“Anybody with the proper access can log on from a Web browser from anywhere in the world,” Woodbrey said.

Over the next few weeks, Director of Public Works Nathan White and his crew will be burying the fiber optic lines that are required for the connections between the various locations and the studio.

Woodbrey is eagerly awaiting the equipment’s arrival, expected sometime in December. Though the company will send someone in to make sure everything is working correctly, he will be doing most of the set up himself.

A broadcast studio was originally proposed for Raymond in the mid-1990s by then Selectwoman Ada Brown.

“I pushed for it ever since I was on the board,” Brown said. “What we had was very poor – the sound and picture were bad. It’s a lot better not to have any than to put something like that before the people.”

And these days, since Raymond uses Casco’s broadcast facility to air selectmen meetings, Raymond residents aren’t able to watch the meetings at all because a mold problem in Casco’s town hall has forced them to shut down the cable station.

Raymond’s broadcast studio didn’t actually make it to a vote until a special town meeting in 2004, where it was tabled until the next year. Reintroduced at the June, 2005 town meeting, it was subsequently approved by Raymond residents, with a start-up cost of $58,000 from the town and $48,000 from Time Warner. Separate money used to pay for the schools’ cameras was obtained through a Homeland Security grant.

“We proposed (the studio) because at the time we had brought in more revenue than we anticipated that was going to go into surplus,” said Selectman Michael Reynolds.

Reynolds added that the surplus combined with the matching grant from Time Warner was a big incentive for him to convince people the timing was right.

Ecstatic over the new studio and the town’s progressive approach to new technology, Town Manager Don Willard touts everything from the servers in the basement of the town office, rebuilt by Woodbrey, to the money they saved by buying much of their computer and office equipment from public auctions at the State of Maine Surplus.

He even sees the positive side about having to wait so long for the new studio.

“The only benefit I can think of in this long delay,” Willard said, “is the capacity of the system will be much greater and the cost will be much less, so functionality is way greater than what was originally envisioned.”

He credits Woodbrey with displaying “extraordinary efforts” in fashioning a technologically advanced system for the town.

“No small town in Maine is doing what we’re doing technology-wise,” he said. “And it’s pretty exciting.”

Raymond Technology Specialist Kevin Woodbrey works at the new console, donated to the town of Raymond by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The console is located in the portable that will soon become Raymond

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