By Dalia Diaz
Why is the government channel (that broadcast council meetings) not transmitting?
The picture and the sound have been atrocious for a long time and I wonder if anybody cares. Even if the public does not, it should be important for the councilors to make sure that the residents are well informed. Again, I believe that it is part of the effort of keeping this community in the dark. An ignorant community is easy to manipulate.
Fact is that the equipment that is in place in the City Council office is no longer functioning and therefore no longer working. It’s neither the Council nor the Mayor’s job to find funding to repair or purchase the equipment.
Under federal law, non-capital costs relating to license requirements are considered franchise fees and are passed onto subscribers. For example, local officials (whomever they are), in negotiating the cable license, may require cable operators to set aside channels for Public, Educational, and Governmental (“PEG”) use. The monies spent to maintain the PEG access studio, equipment, and personnel are considered franchise fees and are passed on to you “the subscriber”.
A municipality may request up to 5% of the cable operator’s annual gross revenue from operating in the municipality less the required License Fee. These fees appear on monthly bills as “Franchise Fees” or “Access Fees.”
Any capital costs or operating expenses incurred directly by the cable operator as a result of franchise requirements, such as purchasing access equipment or operating the facilities for required PEG channels, are recovered from you again “the subscribers”. For example, capital costs relating to the construction of a PEG access studio or the purchase of PEG equipment are considered franchise-related costs. These expenses are treated as external costs and are included in the basic service tier rate calculation. Cable operators may then, at their discretion, either recover the costs in the basic service tier rate or as a separate fee on subscribers’ bills.
That responsibility of repairing or purchasing new equipment falls to Lawrence Community Access Television (LCAT). LCAT is a local non-profit supposedly, as they say, “dedicated to covering the community of Lawrence, Massachusetts”. That’s it! That is their “About Us” portion of their webpage. Actually, I am embarrassed by their webpage. Being a broadcasting station “dedicate to covering the community” that website should be more professional seeing that visual/creative professionals are supposedly working at LCAT.
For a non-profit agency, they do not have their board members announced on their website or Facebook. We have no idea the name of their president. The salary for employees is nowhere to be found, no organization chart, and no nothing.
All I know is that this non-profit agency (LCAT) who is charged with maintaining two local television channels (Public and Government) and every piece of equipment, don’t seem to recruit a board, are taking money for themselves (as employees) through a fee paid to them to allow to operate a cable television system within Lawrence. From the beginning, the arrangement made included that the school department (Education) would be treated separately and they receive their share of funding directly from the cable companies.
There is a board, but for the most part, no one knows how that board came to be or how to be nominated onto the board. This is supposed to be made up of Lawrencians yet, Susan Dowd lives in North Andover and Joseph Bella lives in Methuen, according to their Annual Report filed with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts dated November 1, 2018.
This seems to me like no one has been keeping this organization in check. They have been paying themselves and not updating equipment. This is more a sham! So money to buy a new piece of equipment (called capital improvement) should be no problem for this non-profit – unless the money has been going to pay for their salaries.
Who Cares? Very few people care. Most Lawrence residents probably don’t even care. Because as long as their telenovela channels, music channels, internet, and cell phone apps continue to work, they won’t watch one minute of public access television. Elected officials in Lawrence don’t care – actually it’s best for them that Lawrence residents don’t see the government channels so that way you can’t see all the shenanigans and cover-ups they do during these meetings.
Representatives and Senator – I doubt they care. Victor “Manny” Cruz was Rep. Juana Matías and he contacted in our behalf several government organizations (I have copies) and they did nothing.
