For almost ten years, Reuben Mahar has been one of the town’s experts on the Internet. Little wonder. He’s a technical architect for Maine Health, a consortium of twelve hospitals. Without even a master’s degree! Or college degree! He has a GED, some college credits, and some technical certifications. High school for Reuben was computers and theater. And because it was the mid ‘90s, that was enough to get his first job at Radio Shack. Today, he’s charged with spec’ing all the hardware that the twelve hospitasl buy for the different care-team members, ranging from nurses to surgeons to therapists and so on. Reuben grew up a world away, in Rockland. When he moved here with his wife in 2012, he learned about Waldoboro by watching town meetings on YouTube. After two years or so, he started attending committee meetings for Communication & Technology which are open to the public. By the second meeting, when they opened the floor for public comment, Reuben stood up. Shortly after, they invited him to join the committee. That committee has been wrapped into the Economic Development Committee where Reuben still sits. As such, he represents his former committee’s interests. So, you might Reuben’s first priority is broadband (high-speed internet). You’d be wrong. Reuben’s first priority is running sewer and water up Route 1 to Medomak Valley High School because it would offer a greater service to the town. Because for Reuben, basic needs come first.
I grew up in a pretty religious family. Basically, we were Southern Baptists, and I was used to seeing things either one way or the other, black or white, such as thinking the vast majority of our problems would be fixed by the free market. And ideally, that would be great!
But because I’d started replacing a little of my church time with community events and town meetings, I began to learn about the gray areas, such as the needs of the library, or the food pantry, or how people are trying to ban books in the schools which lights me up to no end, because that hurts people.
For a lot of my childhood, I thought I was really dumb. It didn’t help that I had bad handwriting. Or that my attention wandered when school was too easy. And then, to help me with my spelling, Mrs. Thompson sat me in front of an Apple 2C computer in second grade. The game was silly, but I realized I could play with the computer.
When I turned 14, my parents bought me a computer. I had the standard teenager rules, but they always made sure I could learn stuff. They weren’t rich. They didn’t have a lot of money. But I was allowed to dive into the things I was really interested in. I was connecting as fast as I could, and building and tearing down systems as fast as I could. I got really good at it. It cost me my grades in high school, but for the stuff I focused on, it worked out really well. That freedom gave me the job and the house I have. Otherwise I would have had a completely different life.
That’s why denying people information is my pet peeve. That’s why digital equity is so important to me. If we can’t get people broadband, we’re denying them access, and all the opportunities that come with it. I think about the over-caffeinated 15-year old working online, trying to figure out how our power supply works. Or the mom who hasn’t had any sleep and finally her kids are quiet for five seconds at 2:00AM so she can start work on that paper, or learn how she can be a nurse, or whatever it is that she wants to do. To me, access to that kind of information is a real, basic need in the 21st century, just like air, water and electricity are.
It doesn’t matter your age. There are so many benefits to broadband. Take my parents. My dad is not a technophile. Nor is my mom. But the amount of bandwidth they use! They have a couple of TVs in the house that are never off. Everything they look at runs on the Internet. My dad’s also on Facebook and whatever piece of glass in front of him — a smartphone, tablet or whatever — is also running. And because he’s really into Bible studies and archaeology, that is also available to him for research and study in 4K (high resolution). My mom is really into hockey (I think it’s for the fights), but she, too, does it in 4K which state of the art.
And then, they’ve got their computer with everything backed up automatically — all their house and financial records and all their family photos. That stuff piles up, but they don’t know it. Their Internet is seamless. They’re doing the same stuff they were doing before – watching tv, but instead with more channels, and writing emails, instead of mailing letters, and using the phone. Instead of using the telephone or whatever, it’s going through a different piece of plastic. All those services are delivered through one Internet connection. They don’t have a bunch of utility bills like for cable, phone and whatnot. They have one bill.
My parents live in Rockland and yes, I helped set them up. Warren just hired a company called TDS and built fiber for the whole town. Damariscotta is already connected. Nobleboro and Friendship aren’t yet, but they will be within a year or two. It can happen. Waldoboro is sort of an island in this way.
Right now, we have a mishmash, with fiber on Main Street and a few places in the village. At the other end of the spectrum, we have 239 homes in about three or four pockets where they only can get the Internet on a wireless phone, making it almost impossible for those residents to take classes or work from home. In the middle, we have something like 2,600 homes that only have a single option for the Internet, which is getting more expensive all the time.
No one says they don’t want Internet, but they do say, “Why do we need all that if all we’re doing is checking our email?” But without a competitive system, no one is going to want to buy your house when you go to sell it. And you won’t be able to negotiate for a lower rate.
And I hear this one all the time –“If we do nothing about broadband, it costs me nothing.” And that’s true – we’re talking about planting trees whose shade some of us will never enjoy. There are some in town who don’t necessarily have that much time left. But what about all of Waldoboro’s young people? If we can make this investment now, there will dividends to benefit both us and the next generation.
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