February 4, 2009 Minutes

MINUTES of CTAC of Hamden, New Haven, and West Haven – February 4, 2009   

Stu Arotsky WH
George Alexander H
Gabriel Michael NH
Jennifer Sacco H
Tad Weinstein WH
Sharon Codeanne Comcast

6:08 p.m. meeting called to order.

Old business: Tad is pulling together our annual report for 2008 to the DPUC. 
Mail: Alliance for community media sent us a welcoming packet (again).  Gabriel is considering joining the listserv to monitor their updates.  They have a national conference in Portland Oregon.

New business: motion to donate $300 to the Alliance for Community media passed (in addition to our $100 membership fee).

George made motion to approve new 2009 budget, which has same line items as last year, except for the new allocation to the Alliance for Community media, which is a $300 donation on top of our $100 membership fees. Jen seconded, approved.

Tad has suggested that we make a grant available again to the towns for a school cable-related project again.   Stu has suggested we announce to the towns a new program of this sort so they may apply.  George suggests we email the school superintendants of the towns to solicit applications.  George will email our old grant regulations from the last time this was done for us to look over.  George proposes we temporarily allocate $1500-2000 per town.

Stu is concerned that CTV is in violation of the rules because they are not submitting a budget to us, etc. 

Digital transition is still set for February 17th, though there is the possibility it could still be moved to June.

Jen raised the issue of working to petition to move public access back to regularly accessible channels and viewing quality.  Perhaps we need to convince CTV to join AT&T (even on channel 99) so that we could have standing to file complaints with the DPUC.  As our current area has no representation on AT&T, we don’t appear to have standing.  Unless, those of us who are AT&T customers were to write complaints to AT&T that PEG channels are not available, though AT&T would plausibly put that back on CTV.  We could still complain to AT&T about the low quality presentation of public access originating from other towns. 

Minutes from last month’s meeting approved.  Motion to adjourn 6:57 p.m.