CAMDEN — Camden Town Manager Audra Caler-Bell issued her Nov. 16, 2018 town manager’s report, which follows:

Town Manager’s Office:

• It looks like winter has decided to begin earlier this year than any of us were anticipating, or probably wanting.  In advance I’d like to thank our folks at Public Works and express my appreciation for the work they do.  They do a tremendous job of keeping our streets and roads cleared so we can all get to home and work safely.  This means that during the winter they are on call at all hours of the day/night.

• Our group that is reviewing proposals for the new Town website has scheduled meetings with 3 developers on November 28 and 29.  We will be asking the developers to provide our group a demo of how information can be edited and uploaded onto their platform, their strategy for preserving existing links, how flexible their platform is for embedding third party applications and how much data/cost of data storage to be hosted on the site.  I’d like to thank staff members Janice Esancy and Jeremy Martin as well as Alison McKellar and Paul Cavalli for their input and help in choosing a developer.

• I have drafted an RFQ to find a consultant to help Camden transition from our CMP owned streetlights to Town owned LED fixtures.  I’ve reached out to several neighboring towns to determine if they are interested in participating.  The RFP is written in a manner where the Towns can collectively choose a vendor but will have separate agreements to move forward with their conversions. 

• Ford Enterprises attempted to begin construction on the first segment of the Riverwalk (starting at the Knowlton Street Parking Lot – former skate park) over the past week.  This project has been delayed due to the exceptionally rainy autumn.  Ford is going to get as much of the trail constructed as possible until the ground freezes than resume in the spring.

• I’ve been working with representatives of the Community Television Association of Maine (CTAM) to better understand how rule changes by the FCC will impact yearly franchise fee payments we receive from Spectrum (formerly Time Warner Cable).  Under our current franchise agreement Spectrum must pay Camden 4 percent of its gross annual revenue received from providing services in Camden.  They must also provide the Town with public, educational and local government channels (or PEG’s) to allow us to broadcast local government, School Board meetings and to allow for a public access channel.
• The FCC rule changes are likely to result in cable companies applying the value of PEG’s and other in-kind services toward the 4 percent franchise fee.  The result will be that Camden loses over $70,000 worth of income a year.  MMA and CTAM are working with similar state level interest groups across the country to advocate on behalf of municipalities.

In the meantime, Camden’s franchise agreement was negotiated in 1992 and has not been updated since.  It’s incredibly comprehensive.  With the help of Tony Vigue from CTAM I’ve found several areas where Spectrum appears to not be meeting their obligation to the Town.  I’m going to pursue this further, likely in partnership with neighboring communities who have the same concerns.