November 4, 2015 Minutes

 

MINUTES of CTAC of Hamden, New Haven and West Haven

Meeting Date: November 4, 2015

 

Call to order: A regular monthly meeting of CTAC was held at CTV Offices at 843 State Street, New Haven, Connecticut, on Wednesday, November 4, 2015.  President Tad Weinstein presiding. Don Levy Secretary. Meeting called to order at 6:05.

Members in attendance:

Tad Weinstein, Chair (WH)

George Alexander, Treasurer (H)

Babz Rawls Ivy (NH)

Don Levy, Secretary (H)

Johnes Ruta (NH)

Sharon Codeanne, Comcast

The minutes for the October meeting were approved as submitted.

Sharon Codeanne submitted the COMCAST report, which included the company’s support of initiatives of the Urban League of Southern Connecfticut and Gateway Community College. Sharon also said that new apartments at College and Crown Streets in New Haven were the first in the area to be capable of subscribing to XFINITY using fiber optics which enables much faster upload and download speeds than the COMCAST technology now available to the remainder of COMCAST customers.

In reply to a question by Johnes Ruta, Ms. Codeanne said that there are no plans to begin imposing so-called data caps on local COMCAST internet subscribers despite the fact that such caps were being imposed in other COMCAST service areas across the country.

Board members noted the continued absence of any representation from CTV despite the letter the CTAC sent to CTV’s board of Directors in September. Board members were concerned about the status of the long delayed plan whereby Frontier subscribers would be able to access the CTV programs for which they pay a monthly cable surcharge. The Board passed a motion directing Tad to contact Steve Gemmell at Frontier for an update on the progress toward a resolution.

The board passed two motions submitted by George Alexander regarding the decision to migrate the CTAC website onto the WordPress platform. These motions authorized payment to GoDaddy.com for hosting and $225.00 to Johnes Ruta for programming services.

Don Levy said that he will draft a press release for broad community dissemination by conventional media and by social media seeking applications for the CTAC Public Service Video Grants. He noted that he will send the draft press release to Babz Rawls Ivy for her input. Upon approval of the press release by CTAC, Babs said she would use her media expertise to get the word out to the community. Of course this outreach cannot be initiated until the new website is able to post the grant application itself.

The November regular meeting of CTAC was adjourned at 7:01 p.m.

Respectfully submitted by D. Levy, CTAC secretary