WESTBROOK – Special events, including performances, concerts and even the live broadcast of the first day back to school for students, may be cut from public access Channel 2 due to cuts in the broadcasting budget by the Westbrook School Department.
While the cuts were approved during the budget process, the effects of those cuts weren’t seen until this week, when the 2013-2014 fiscal year began on July 1.
According to Tina Radel, TV station manager, the school department stopped funding its half of the station manager position, which had been split with the city. On Monday, Radel became a part-time city employee. When both the city and the school funded her position, Radel was considered a full-time school employee.
“Unfortunately, there will likely be disruptions to programming given the circumstances and the cut in hours, as well as my assistant. I am hoping to explore grants to maintain school service,” Radel said in an email last week. “It is a shame because our broadcasting capabilities from the Performing Arts Center and within the schools will not be utilized to their full potential.”
For the last two weeks, Westbrook School Committee meetings have not been broadcast, but Radel said that was a temporary problem. During the June 26 meeting, Radel said, the live feed was not properly set up, and during the June 19 committee meeting, staff was unavailable for the broadcast.
Jerre Bryant, city administrator, said there is a backup plan in place for when Radel is unavailable. House Productions, based in Portland, has employees who are trained to run the Westbrook broadcasting equipment.
“If I had been notified there was a coverage problem, I would have done that immediately, but I was not made aware of that fact. I can’t solve a problem when I’m not told about it,” said Bryant about the school meetings not broadcast the last two weeks.
The station will continue to broadcast public meetings, including the School Committee, Planning Board, City Council and Zoning Board of Appeals, but other special events will be shown only if the manager has the time.
“Like everything else, we’ve had to prioritize what we want to fund and don’t want to fund,” said Bryant. “There will be continued public access to governmental meetings and that’s very important to continue. She’ll have about 14 to 15 hours every week for other duties [besides broadcasting the meetings]. There’s some prioritizing of other activities that needs to be done, but clearly over the course of the year the telecasting of all City Council, Planning Board, Board of Appeals and School Committee meetings will continue. Those average about six hours a week. Some weeks it’s a lot more and some weeks it’s a lot less. Clearly going from full time to part time, there’s less getting done but it in no way impacts the city and school meetings,” Bryant said.
Last year, the city covered Radel’s salary, even though she was considered a school employee. This year, the city decided to only pay for its half of her salary, $21,486 per year. The school department did not include the other half in its budget.
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