Milton discusses reality of televised meetings

Televised governmental meetings could become reality for Milton. But funding the service could mean extra fees for cable subscribers.

The cities of Puyallup, Orting, Sumner, Fife, DuPont and University Place and Pierce County Council already televise their meetings. Televising Milton’s meeting would cost the city $12,870 a year and would cover approximately one regular city council meeting per month. On July 6 Connie Fessler, interim city administrator, said the city could ask Comcast to renegotiate the franchise agreement early, but it seems unlikely the company would choose to do so.

“The impetus for renegotiating the franchise, at this time, is to increase the franchise fee from 3.4 percent to 5 percent,” explained Fessler. “Most cities are collecting 5 percent, which is charged for the use of the city’s right of way. There is no reason why the use of Milton’s right of way is less valuable than other cities.”

While televising council meetings and increasing the cable franchise fee are two separate issues, they become connected when considering the options to finance televising council meetings, explained Fessler. The council could choose to televise meetings and pay the total cost from the general fund, but with an already dwindling budget, this is not the most feasible option.

Fessler recommended that the council increase the franchise fee with Comcast, but this means the city would also have to agree to fund government access by contributing 25 cents per Comcast

customer, per month, from the general revenue. This would increase revenue to the general fund by more than $23,000 per year. A portion of this, approximately $6,400 generated from fees to Milton’s cable customers, would be paid for government access services, leaving a net increase to general fund revenue of $16,600. Other cities have increased their franchise fee by this method.  

Many council members were torn over the importance of televised meetings, especially if fees needed to be raised to pay for it.

Councilmember Dwayne Neal said he talked to residents about televised meetings, but many were indifferent.

“Most I talked to were not even interested in city politics. They would probably watch two seconds of it televised and think it was too boring and change the channel,” Neal said. “I think this issue is way down on the city’s list of priorities.”

Other council members fully supported the idea of televised meetings, believing that it would rouse public interest in local politics.

“The meetings might be boring, but some might find them insightful,” said Councilmember Bob Whalen. “There are a lot of government junkies out there. I’m a big supporter of bringing the government to the people, so I think this can be a noble experiment and very useful to the citizens.”

After the discussion, council members decided to table any action until the city’s economic stability returned. Once the council approves funding, the next step would be determining the schedule of playback for the meetings. This schedule would utilize all production capacity allotted to the city. The Rainer Communications Commission (RCC) is offering a new service of meetings available On Demand from Comcast and would also be available for streaming off the Internet. RCC would provide the staffing and equipment, and would also set up the cameras and tape meetings.  

Previously, Councilmem-

ber Leonard Sanderson

had inquired about RCC funds being available for purchase of equipment, but currently the RCC does not have funds available to purchase camera equipment. Cities that have purchased their own equipment have done so from their own funds.  

At the meeting, Sanderson stressed the importance of using all necessary technologies to get information out to the public.

“This is an issue of how the city wants to communicate with the citizens and it’s something we should seriously address in the near future,” Sanderson said. “TV will probably get better and newspapers are going out the window, so we can’t rely on them forever.”

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