MY EVERETT NEWS

City could give back $25.00 to every cable household and still have plenty of money to meet needs for 10 years…

In a guest commentary printed in the Daily Herald yesterday, Everett City Council members Brenda Stonecipher and Drew Nielsen cited several issues with how Everett TV, the city’s cable channel on Comcast and Frontier, operates. They had three major issues, The process by which a budget request for capital improvements jumped by $158,000.00 above the low bid. The programming policy, in which only 17 percent of the programming over a 30 day time period featured public meetings, while the Mayor’s monthly interviews with Kate Reardon commanded 61 percent of the airtime. The taxing policy that funds the channel’s capital expenses and collects $1.00 per month from all cable subscribers in the Everett City limits. That generates about $30,000.00 per month with a current balance of 1.7 million dollars that can’t be used for operating the TV channel but only capital improvements.
The two council members are recommending that the current budget request be shelved and a new plan developed for Everett TV. We’ve been writing about this since March 4th, type Everett TV in the search box above to see additional articles.

What exactly are Everett Cable Customers paying $30,000.00 a month for?

I’ve been writing about Everett TV for some time and several interesting things were revealed in a briefing to the Everett City Council last night.

The City has no idea how many people are watching Everett TV.

For eight years, Everett City Council Presidents have been invited to participate on Everett TV and not one of them has ever accepted the offer.

City Council members were visibly shocked when it was revealed that there was 1.7 million dollars in the Everett Cable TV Capital Expenditure Fund.

Even with 1.7 million dollars in the capital fund, there is no extra money to spend on the operational side.

There is no cap on the amount of money cable companies can collect from Everett customers.

There is a difference in an RFP (request for proposals) and a Bid. The RFP is a competitive negotiation where the final result can greatly exceed the initial estimate by more than a hundred thousand dollars.

There is no current business plan or outline for future operations that the council can easily reference.

Council President Shannon Affholter asked the city administration to put together another briefing in a couple of weeks and then the council would take action on the funding requests. In the meantime, I’d bet several council members will be checking out Everett TV and all it actually offers both to cable customers as well as online.