AUGUSTA — City councilors appear about ready to share their seats in council chambers with other city boards.

Augusta’s Cable TV and Telecommunications Committee recently recommended city council chambers, and its technological ability to broadcast meetings both on television and the Internet, be opened to virtually all city boards and committees.

Some councilors who were initially opposed to allowing more widespread usage of the meeting space have since changed their minds and are even encouraging it, with seven of the eight councilors agreeing to sponsor a proposed order allowing most city groups to use the chambers.

Councilors said using the council chambers which, last year, underwent roughly $100,000 worth of work to be outfitted with remote controlled cameras and other technology to improve the broadcast of council meetings on CTV-7, would allow groups such as the Augusta Board of Education, Planning Board and Greater Augusta Utility District to conduct business on television, so the public can be more informed of their actions.

However at least one councilor, Ward 1’s Michael Byron, has expressed concern that if other groups using the chambers sit in the seats usually reserved for councilors, it could cause confusion, in viewers and constituents, over who is speaking from those seats during meetings of other groups. Byron, who has previously said other groups sitting in councilors’ seats on the council bench was a “nonstarter” for him, thus declined to join his fellow councilors in sponsoring the order allowing more use of council chambers, an order likely to go to councilors at their business meeting Thursday.

When councilors have untelevised workshop meetings, they sometimes sit at a table down on the floor of the chambers, not in their seats on the bench.

However, because of the way the chamber is setup for video and audio production, according to At-large Councilor Cecil Munson, if councilors or other groups using council chambers are going to have their meetings televised — which is the main reason councilors are considering opening up the chambers for others to use — they’ll have to sit in councilors’ seats on the bench.

“People need to understand, to be able to televise these things, people would need to be able to sit in these seats,” Munson said when councilors discussed the issue last week. “You can’t put them down front, it’s just not going to work, because of the video, because of the sound.”

The proposed council order would give the city manager’s office responsibility for overseeing and scheduling the use of council chambers. Council meetings would take priority over other meetings.

The school board usually meets in either the Capital Area Technical Center cafeteria or the Cony High School auditorium. Those spaces lack the high-tech video and audio television production system installed in council chambers about a year ago, thus the audio and video quality of broadcasts of board meetings has been poor, according to board members.

And school board meetings, because they aren’t in an established, production-ready spot, are time-consuming for the crew of Waterville-based Digital Spirit Media, which has a $115,000 yearly contract to record and broadcast council meetings and other city and school events.

Leif Dahlin, community services director, said it can take up to 35 hours to set up, record and broadcast a school board meeting at CATC, versus about five hours for the same meeting if it were in council chambers.

And, Dahlin said, the contract between the city and media company includes a set number of hours.

So fewer hours spent setting up for school board meetings would mean more hours available for other events in Augusta, freeing up, Dahlin said, “about 250 hours a year that can benefit this community in enhanced communications.”

Keith Edwards — 621-5647

kedwards@centralmaine.com