Funny how sometimes the modern way is the old way. It was like a page from history recently when Windham School Board deliberated about combining Raymond and Windham school districts. DajA? vu.

Raymond high school students have been attending Windham schools for well over 50 years. In fact, for many decades, District or Union 15 included Windham, Raymond and Gray.

Of course there weren’t as many students in those days, and they were called pupils until they got to high school. One superintendent, Fred Aikins, visited all the schools and gave a report in the town report each year. Combining Windham and Raymond school management certainly harkens back to the old days.

One thing that continues, as it has for many years, is the settling in of the town council. It usually takes a year or so for new councilors and sitting councilors to become adjusted. About the time this happens, it’s election time again and the possibility of someone else new coming on board.

If this year is like most others, candidates will be few and far between. With a new council comes the rerun of past council performance, a critique, blame, and the opinion and editorializing. Like I said, it takes time to settle down and deal with today.

The introduction of a process called Granicus sounds intriguing. This is an improved way of communicating, most advantageous to those who have access to computers and the Internet. It’s not clear how this would benefit those citizens who do not. With decades of experience taking minutes for many town boards, I am curious as to how this new method will actually produce typed minutes. I’m well aware of voice-activated technology, but cannot figure out how typed pages will be produced.

How, for example, would the individual councilor or member of the public be recognized and identified when they speak? Will they have a special button to push which identifies them to the recording equipment?

And if the cost is $75 an hour for transcription, has anyone any idea how long it takes to transcribe, verbatim, a four hour public hearing? When I was taking minutes using shorthand, the transcription and formatting usually took about four hours for a two hour meeting. However, the only time minutes are legally required to be verbatim, is a public hearing.

I do know there are firms and businesses that obtain tapes or CDs and translate them into hard copy (paper) – the only record recognized by professional archivists as permanent records, by the way. I took a look (via the Internet) at a couple of other Granicus-served community’s minutes on line and found the agenda items linked to downloadable PDF files, one for each agenda item.

Those folks who don’t have computers at home or cable television will need to depend on what they have today – good unbiased newspaper reporting and hearsay. Or they could use up some gasoline and drive to the library where there are public access computers.

In my mind there are still many unanswered questions about this program. It will be great to be able to access information on the Web. I hope that information sharing will be as convenient for those non-computer households – who also pay their taxes.

A couple of the councilors mentioned the other night their feeling that the “whole town” shouldn’t be paying for operations of the sewer in South Windham, which benefits so few. So far as I know, the cost of the system in the past has always been “subsidized” by tax dollars, because if the cost had been divided among the actual users, it would have been exorbitant. The need for the original facility came about because of pollution of the Presumpscot River.

The philosophy behind whether or not the whole town should pay for something only a particular group uses, has been broached numerous times. More than half of households in Windham don’t have (nor have ever had) children in the public schools. We don’t all travel via snowmobile, but tax dollars help snowmobile clubs. We all pay for “public” water, but about half the town residents have wells. Sidewalk plowing is included in the budget, but many areas don’t have sidewalks, ad infinitum. It’s a town. We’re responsible for each other. We all pay for services we don’t use.

I thought the latest buzzword was inclusion? Seems kind of strange to insert the philosophy of “I don’t use it, why should I pay for it” in a meeting where tax dollars are being considered to pay for adding closed captioning to televised public meetings.

See you next week.