 I think I'm going to call this to order. Welcome, everyone. My name is Dan Dunn. I am a member of the Board of Selectment. I'm here with my colleague Stephen Berger on my left and Joe Carrow on my right. Adam Chaplain is our time manager. Marie Kappelka is our board administrator. I just want to remind everyone that this meeting is being recorded by ACMI and anyone else who's here. So just smile when you get up to the microphone. Sorry. There's something else I was going to say, and I've lost it. Oh, I remember. I want to please everyone sign in. If you did not sign in when you came in, please go ahead and sign in now. Even if you're not planning on speaking, we need the sign-in record for the purpose of the hearing and saying who was here. So the sign-in sheet in the back, I appreciate it to everyone for to do that. I would also like to introduce the members of the Cable Advisory Committee, who have helped to orchestrate this and the Board of Selectments' primary people who are interacting with the cable companies for the purposes of this negotiation. We have John Maher here in the front row, David Goode here in the front row, Michael Quinn over by the door, and Joseph Wheats. Sorry, right here raising his hand in the middle there. Notice of tonight's hearing has been duly published in the Arlington Advocate on April 2nd and on April 9th of this year. We're going to, I will provide a copy of that notice for the record. Tonight's hearing is mandated by the renewal provisions of the Federal Cable Act and applicable Massachusetts laws and regulations. The town is fortunate to have three different cable operators offering their services to Arlington residents, Comcast of Massachusetts, RCN, LLC, and Verizon, New England. The current cable license held by Comcast will expire on July 25th, 2016. The current cable license held by RCN will expire on September 10th, 2016. The current license held by Verizon will expire on March 26th, 2017. The town is currently involved in the federally required ascertainment process. The purpose of tonight's hearing is to, one, identify future cable related community needs and interests, and two, review the performance of Comcast, RCN, and Verizon under their current cable licenses. Once the town has gathered community input, it will separately inform Comcast, RCN, and Verizon of the kinds of services and facilities that the town expects to be provided during any possible renewable term. Thus, the testimony that you will give this evening is very important, and I encourage all of you to speak candidly and specifically about any cable related manners. You must come up and provide testimony in order for your views to count and be a part of the record, so please testify. When you come up to speak, please give your name and address. Because this is an ascertainment hearing for the town, I will ask that you not pose direct questions for Comcast, RCN, or Verizon to answer. All testimony and or inquiries should be directed through me as the chair of this meeting. Finally, I'd like to clarify that while this is an ascertainment hearing on cable television matters, there are two related subjects over which the Board of Select has no authority to regulate. The first is the rates that the cable operators charge for their services. The second is the commercial programming that the cable operators choose to show on their cable systems. I realize that these are two important issues for cable subscribers. While people are certainly free to comment on these matters this evening, it is nonetheless important for everyone to realize that the selectmen cannot mandate the specific rates that cable operators can charge, nor can the selectmen mandate the specific commercial programming that the cable operators carry on the Arlington cable system. With those introductory comments, I'll call on members of the public to testify. After that, I'll call on the town's cable advisory committee to make its presentation. And after that testimony from the Arlington Community Media Incorporated. So please come on up to the microphone to speak. We've got a lot of people here, so I'm gonna try to ask you all to limit your speeches to under three minutes. Obviously, I'm sure that there's going to be some repetition, but at the same time, so long as we, you know, you can signal that without necessarily using your whole three minutes. But at the same time, we're here to listen and we're here to hear what you have to say. So whoever wants to be first, if you could step up to the microphone, welcome. Just remind you, could you please, oh, actually, pardon me, just pause one moment. There's one thing that I forgot to do. I wanted to introduce the members of, from the cable companies who are here tonight. And now we've got a couple gentlemen from Comcast over there. Do you wanna just stand up and briefly introduce yourselves? The Rebundly Comcast Cable. I'm Mike Allen, I'm also a Comcast Cable. And do we have anyone from the other companies who I didn't get a chance to meet beforehand? I am not seeing anyone else present. Thank you for waiting. If you could give me your name and address. Sure. Let it go. My name's Steve Rankle. I actually currently live in Medford, but I'm also here representing the Boston Church of Christ. We are refurbishing a building at 75 Pleasant Street and we were at the town hall on Sundays for church services as well as other facilities in town. I just wanna address both the committee. Thank you for having this hearing and the members of the cable companies as well as the supporters. I actually connected with ACME about five, six years ago. One of my clients was the Big Brother, Big Sister Foundation. You're probably very familiar with them. This was the group that drives around the blue trucks and collects donations of clothing and then turns them into profits which they then used to match bigs and littles. And ACME was tremendous in helping us produce a TV show called Pack Rat versus Purger. If you remember the old odd couple show, you kind of get the point. Usually in every relationship, husband, wife, my wife and I were the pilot episode. There's a pack rat. So we were just trying to get people to poke fun at that. That ended up being something that we ended up distributing to 170 local cable access TV channels. Even several years later, people would comment it online. This is a pretty important venue for us. Obviously, this may or may not have been publicly discussed before I'm sure with the town manager, probably Richard has talked about, but we're planning on opening a food pantry. We are planning, we've just started a new group called Hope Scouts, which is sort of a, just really trying to help people in the community. We're looking for places that we can publicize that. We're looking for places that we can get young volunteers involved in doing a lot of what we did with the bigs and littles who just had this incredible experience. So anyway, I'm almost up in my three minutes, so all I just want to say is this is an extraordinarily important organization to us as a new investor in the town. I've been a resident of Arlington multiple times and we're looking to move back into town and try not to over buy by $100,000. That's a separate topic. But I just, again, thank you. I just, from on a head level, as a business guy who brought my client in here and a heart level, as someone who has a ministry in town and really cares about the town, this is an extraordinary reference and I tell people repeatedly, calling ACME a local cable access TV station is a pathetic understatement compared to when you look under the hood and you see the quality of what we have and what we get to give the community. So thank you. Thank you for your comments. Who's up? I should also, I meant to say in my opening remarks that we will also be accepting, and I'll remind people at the end of the meeting, we are accepting written comments for the next 14 days as well, but which was not to deter anyone, simply as an additional venue. Welcome. Could you name an address, please? My name is Ruth Hirsch and I live at 14 Watch You Sit. I have an Arlington and I'm a little nervous, so bear with me. First, I'd like to say I love my cable station. I'm not gonna say which one it is, but I love it. I love watching Law and Order 17 times a week. But I really do love more my cable access station. And I'm gonna cry for some ridiculous reason, so it's like ridiculous. So speaking specifically about the needs of the town, and I would say that the commitment that the cable stations have made to cable access is really important and it really demonstrates an investment in the community, the local community. And I hate to be too cliche about this, but the idea of doing well by doing good actually matters to me as a consumer. And what else do I have to say? I do think it's a really important way to get back to the community. I also think it's really good public policy in terms of citizen participation. And if we were to actually look at cable access stations and voter turnout in Massachusetts, we would see in Arlington in particular that there is the largest turnout I think in the state and we also have one of the, one that's not the best cable access stations in the state. So there may be a correlation, don't know. But I do think our cable access station is really vital. It's a vital community and it's vibrant and I'm very grateful for it. And I love the news on cable access. I love, I mean, I watch a lot of the shows. I never did, you know, before I moved to Arlington I didn't watch cable access and now I do. It's a really important part of my life. So that's all. Thank you for having the hearing. Thank you for your comments. Who's next? Welcome, name and address please. My name's Mitchell Steiner, 65 Appleton Street, Arlington. And I'd like to recommend that the committee require all the cable companies as, you know, in order to do business in Arlington that they be required to be honest with us. I've received a flyer in the mail advertising, well, more than one, more than 100 probably advertising, you know, for $79.95 you get this, this and this. Well, it's $79.95 plus taxes and fees and equipment. And in order to comparison shop, we have three. I'd like to know how much it really costs. I've tried phoning the companies and basically I've been told, well, we can't really tell you until after you sign up, you'll see when you get your first bill. I don't know about you, but I don't like to buy something and then find out only find out later how much it really costs along the same lines. The act is if the cable box is optional. It's not in which case it shouldn't be $79.95 plus the cost of the cable box. It's required. It should be in the price upfront. That's basically it. Thank you very much. Who's up next? Come on up. I'd actually even encourage just to move things along if someone wants to, you know, stand over there by the door who wants to be next and so we can have a, you know, just a good flow without waiting for people to come on up to the mic. I'd appreciate that. Thank you. Welcome. Hi. Your name in address, please. I'm Sin, A.K.A. Mrs. Gareth Williams, 35.0 kill drive. Welcome. My husband and I have been members of Arlington Friends of the Drama for a number of years. Well, Arlington Friends of the Drama is one of the nonprofits that is a member of ACMI and through our membership we have been able to do all sorts of promotion for our theater group both on the cable station, doing community bulletin board things. We have our own YouTube channel and we've been able to do everything from interviews with cast and directors. We broadcast our meeting entertainment and we even did a show years so ago, The Importance of Being Earnest, which is in the public domain and we were able to videotape that entire show and broadcast it. We also did a behind the scenes making of. So having this, what's the word I'm looking for? I'm not an actor. This resource, our nonprofit has been able to really get the word out about who we are, what we do and how we can benefit the community as well. Thank you very much. Well, welcome. Thank you for coming. Hi. Name and address, please. I'm Jay Meena. I'm Jason Darraja and I live in 17 William Street. I'm a junior at Arlington High School and you can consider ACMI as my second home. I literally do almost. If I'm not doing it at home, then I'm doing it at ACMI. And speaking for the youth of the community, ACMI has provided a voice and that's really important, especially for the youth of our age if we want to make a change. And as Sin pointed out earlier, it's an extremely valuable resource for teenagers to convey their thoughts about the community. Teenagers do news. I do, my sister does. And a slew of teenagers do it. And they make films and put their voice out there and that's a really big part of the community. And we should have ACMI just for that reason. Thank you very much for coming. Welcome, Bob. Good evening, thank you. Bob, Radosha, I live at 45 Columbia Road. I think we're fortunate to have three providers in town. It's unusual, most people don't believe it when I say that we do. And I realize that kind of, I hope it keeps them competitive and I think it does. My only issue I have is the removal of disconnected equipment. I have a situation where we've got two services to a house. I think one is ASEAN and the other is Comcast. There's six cables coming across at the house. There were five boxes on the house. And last week, ASEAN came down and took out a couple of boxes and took out some other things. But in the past, whenever I've looked into trying to do that, you don't get a good response. They accept it and they say, well, yeah, we'll look into it. We'll see what we can do with busy now and all, so forth. But I'd like to see more of a, take a little more responsibility in removing this abandoned equipment. It's basically an eyesore and I have to look at all of that and you'd like to have it, you can have it. Without objection, I'll add it to the record. For this one, okay. So that's my only complaint and it's, I'm not the only one that's spoken to that in the past. Anything you can do, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Steven Rebelak. I live at 111 Sunnyside Avenue. Welcome. Over the, a few months ago, I became an RCN customer. And when I initially got their service, I had a lot of problems with intermittency. This turned out to be the little variety of vandals that we call squirrels, just eating through the wire. But this involves several calls to RCN support. Every time I called there was someone on the other end of the phone within 60 seconds. I was absolutely flabbergasted, but they were very consistent about this. They sent a technician over who did line readings and ended up swapping, you know, replacing the line between my house and the pole. At the end of this ordeal, they gave me a $20 discount on my bill. I didn't ask for it, they just gave it to me. So I'm incredibly happy and just really amazed with the level of service that they provide. I also feel this is a little odd to say, but although I am an RCN customer, I don't use them for cable. I'm strict, in my household, we're strictly over the air and over the top. But some of the stuff like ACMI, we do watch online. And that's all I have, thank you. Thank you. Come on up. Welcome. Thank you. Hi. I'm Ms. Hannah. I was raised in Arlington, I still live here. Address, please, thank you. 223 Florence Avenue. Thank you. So I figured I'd speak a little bit about what ACMI has done for me, which is a whole lot. I, to say the least, it pretty much started my career. That was about a year ago. So I sort of stumbled into ACMI hoping to find an outlet for all this random stuff I knew I wanted to do. And it spiraled into me becoming the assistant news director on the news program. And now I have my first full-time production job at a real life company, even though ACMI is real as well. But just saying, I've seen a lot of people come into ACMI and leave with the skills they would have never gotten anywhere else because ACMI provided the resources to learn and work and move forward and leave with something to show for it. And that is a very, very rare thing. We hosted a news director meeting with cable access stations from around the state. And I think it is safe to say that Arlington was the one cable access station that trumped every other one. The sense of community we had was truly remarkable to other stations. They were blown away by how close-knit we were, how organized we were, the amazing stuff we produced. I left feeling completely fulfilled, knowing that I had done something right by being a part of this organization and it made me feel really close to my community. I mean, I grew up in Arlington and never once had anyone come up to me being like, hey, I saw you on TV before. I was like, okay, that's super new for me. And I grew up here, I'm 24 years old and I'm finally feeling close to my community although I left. I'm still able to come home and watch my peers who I started with, who started doing an internship and I was still there on television pursuing the exact same dreams I had set out to pursue. So that's a really unique thing. Thank you very much. Welcome. Hello, I'm Julia Bloom. I live at 169 Sylvia Street. So I actually got involved with ICMI by going to the very first Studio Nights meeting. This was a new program they had where amateurs could come in every Wednesday night and have pizza and help film something. So I started going to it because I wanted to meet new people and also to learn some new things. It's really grown for me, our group. I've seen us slowly become more and more professional. We just celebrated our one year, sorry, we'll be celebrating our one year anniversary in May. And I've really grown fond of everyone there and it's become a group of friends. I've also really got excited about video production. So even if I'm doing it on the side, I know it's something I definitely want to do in my future career. Now I'm also now an intern at Arlington Public News and I enjoy filming the newscast and also getting to produce my own segments is very valuable to me because as Hannah said before, it gives me a voice, it helps me do something. I'm working up to doing my own full-time interviews and I'm really getting some skills that I know I'll take forward later in life. And in addition, I get to have fun. So I really value Arlington Community Media for the skills and the friendships it's given me. Thank you very much. Come on up. Welcome. Hi, my name is Edith Moison. I live 31 Arson Avenue and I was a librarian at the Autoson Middle School. Four years ago, ACMI contacted us to begin to run a youth program. And two years ago, they built us a little room. They took my little office and they built a green screen room and that was the beginning of a big change for us. Right now, we have more than 200 students who did come to this green room to do homework, to do big projects with facts teacher or social study teachers. We also run a pretty successful after-school program. Right now, we have 16 teenagers who are everywhere. They are doing all the big filming for concerts, play, graduation ceremonies, Memorial Day assemblies and more. They also, every month, work on the different subject, learning how to do the documentary, how to do after-report for news and all sort of things. And now, it's our turn. First, also, ACMI gave us a lot of their time, workshop. They come to us and do some workshop. At the Autoson, we go to the studio to do some work, to take some workshop together too. We did a live show this year. That was the first time. We did all sorts of different videos that are now very visible and we are reaching out to communities. The ONN group was asked to work on a specific video for the Boys and Girls Club board meeting in May. They have been working during the break in December and in February to help to do this video. We were also conducted by AEF, the Education Foundation of Arlington to also do a video for them. And I think it's all thanks to ACMI. It did a tremendous job to reach to us and give us a lot of opportunities for which we are very, very grateful. Thank you very much. Who's next? Welcome. Hi. My name is Gayatri Sundarajan and I live on 17 William Street. So I've kind of grown up with ACMI. I started when I was in sixth grade and now I'm in ninth. And I think I've learned so much from being part of ACMI. I've been part of multiple of their groups and now currently I'm part of their high school groups and also help out with the middle school and I'm part of Arlington Public News. In ACMI, I've kind of been given the opportunity to meet new people and also learn new skills that I probably would have learned no other way. I've been able to interview many people and I've been able to learn many new things about the energy savings in Arlington, energy efficiency, from everything from that to all the high school events and middle school events. I just think ACMI gives everybody an opportunity to learn how to do video production, any part of it that they want, and with people who are willing to help them. The staff at ACMI have probably been the best I've ever met. They're willing to help you when you need any help and they're willing to spend time with you for like hours if you need them to help you with the project. And they're willing to be there every step of the way. Many people have started new shows and everything by just having an idea and having the ACMI staff go the other distance. And I think for me personally, I've gotten so much better at either doing interviews and filming and other things like that just because of being part of ACMI. Thank you very much. Welcome. My name is Yawa and I live at 80 Margo Street in Arlington, in East Arlington. So I guess I will take what Jay said earlier about the fact that ACMI given voice to young people that want to make a change. I would say it's also given a voice to adults that want to make a change. And it's really by gay. So ACMI allowed me to connect in meaningful way with my community and meet new people that live in Arlington and that do really incredible thing over here. So I get the chance to interview some leader of the community, some non-profit organization, but also international. It's not just Arlington. So that's what ACMI is all about. It's really, I would say a getaway to the world but also a way to connect to our neighbors and build a community around here. The staff is just incredible. They are really, really available for us. Anytime we need something, we need an equipment, we need to learn something, they are really here for them. And just, I mean, there's just few of them but it feel like it's a team of 10, 20 people that are doing an incredible job. And really, I mean, I don't see Arlington being the same thing without ACMI because it's really a vector, really a way to connect people together. Thank you very much. Mr. Lannard, welcome. What's that? I still have to introduce myself? I think you do. John Lennard, precinct 17, town meeting member. Did you mention that there's nobody from RCN here tonight? Not that I am aware of. They could have come in later but they haven't identified themselves. Is there anyone from RCN here? It would appear not. One of the things which interested me, I had a chance to take a peek at some of the literature. Is everything for RCN and all the other representatives tonight, is this for 10-year contracts that they're gonna be signing? Mr. Mardio, very... Subject in negotiation. Subject in negotiation, and the last one was 10 or five years. The last one was 10. I find it interesting because as a retired member from Verizon, we were not contracted up this year but the length they've ever gone is five years. And I'm just surprised that if a company such as Verizon with employees and its union members could only go for five years, how can towns say we'll go for 10 years? It just seems like giving away a little bit too much. The reason I also mentioned it is because I noticed in the literature from RCN, it had mentioned that in one of its bullets, I think it was around the 20s, RCN right now is basically saying they've reached their maximum in a certain capacity, which gave the impression that they can't go any farther as far as a particular thing in the town. They can't enhance it, they can't grow anymore. And what scares me is what somebody told me years ago is be careful because once a company comes in and settles into a town and can't expand anymore, that's the company packs up to see it later. Now it may leave their business in the town, but the officers, the desks, the personnel, the people that spend money in the town, they're gone. And we got a valuable piece of property on Mass Avenue. And I'd hate to see that turned into another Roscoe drug because we always remember that happens. What I would like to see is if we do get into a negotiation with anybody, no matter who is with for 10 years, if we're gonna go to the extreme of 10 years, I'd like to see more into it, such as what Mr. Radocha mentioned earlier, about, hey, I'll just come up and say it, hey, I see, and if you do wanna leave, we can't compel you to stay. We can't force you to stay in the town. But before you leave, could you clean up some of your stuff before you go? Because as we know, once the horse is out of the bond, you can't get him back in again. And I would like that also thought to be contributed to any of the companies like AT&T, Verizon, or whatever. Hey, maybe we should start thinking about a five year. You show us something in five years, and we'd be more than willing to meet again and go for another five years and include the abandoned equipment in it at that time. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. Thanks. Nancy Flynn-Barverk 159 Waverly Street. And I'm here because my daughter, well, all of my kids have had some contact with ACMI on some level, but my daughter was very involved. And I just wanted to reiterate some of the things that people have here have already said. What an amazing resource it is for the students. I can't speak to it for adults because I'm not involved the way my kids were, but for the students, it's been amazing. And my daughter was a member of the Audison News Network or the program that did the news program through Audison. She remained a member in the high school. And the technical skills that she got down there amazed me to the point where she was able, as a senior, to do a full-length documentary that she produced, wrote, edited, did everything. She came in junior high, didn't know much about it, film production, TV production. And she ended up being able to make her own documentary that was aired. So the skills that she learned there, the hard science stuff was incredible. But because people have already discussed that, what I would really like to talk about is kind of the soft skills that they've done for her down there. And that was the ability for her to be able to do this documentary, the poise that she had, the confidence that she had to go talk to people that she didn't know, to interview people that she didn't know, write the interview questions, to film them, to call people that she needed use for content and she needed licenses for them and permission. She was able to do that as if she'd been doing it her whole life because of the programs and the staff at ACMI. And the way they treat those kids when they come in, they treat them as young adults, not as children. And as they grow older, they treat them as adults, not young adults. And they give them the responsibilities that they know they can handle because they're taught what they need to know. And by the time they're in high school, they're part of the crew. They're not student crew anymore, they're part of the crew. And I just think it's an amazing place for the technical skills that kids get and the professional personal skills that they get. Thank you. Thank you very much. Welcome. Hello, I'm Benjamin Goble and I live at 89 Sunset Road. I'm a senior at Arlington High School this year and I had an internship program through ACMI. I think this was the first year they were doing it. And it's really helped me. I want a major in film studies. I want to write for TV shows. And this really helped me strengthen my application. I learned so many technical skills. I learned about storyboarding, like writing, because many of these people have been to film school. They're all professionals. They've helped me so much. And last year, the previous year, I made a video for a film contest that they had a part of making the Arlington High School A Town Teen Video Contest. And I placed fairly well and I had a lot of fun making it, but my video was very low production quality. It was, you know, I had a lot of fun making it though. And then this year, with their equipment, things like very good cameras, audio equipment, their editing software, and them guiding me through the process. I got to make something really great this year that I'm proud of. I'm submitting it to more film festivals. And it's just been an awesome opportunity for me. And I've known so many people throughout my middle school and high school experience that have gone there and were telling me about it for years. And I was like, but then I have to go after school and do stuff. But like this year, when I have done it, I had such a great time. It really is a great place for the community. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. Jasper Hamilton, live on 33 Academy Street. See, I guess I want to talk about how much I've learned at ACMI. Just the amount of technical experience you get, it's unbelievable really, the sports events that you film and things. I know how to set up equipment that I don't think I would have known otherwise. I'm going into film school at Emerson next year and I feel prepared. Like, I know how to do some of this stuff. And what's great, the people and the resources and the people you meet, I knew nothing about cameras my freshman year. I started going to focus media, the youth group. And I'm stuck with it. I'm a senior now. And now I know what to look for in cameras. I'm interested in it. I've always been interested in film, but now I'm interested in the technical side of it. And I owe a lot of that to ACMI. I mean, I wanted to make a short film last year. And I wanted it all to take place in one room, right? And we were going to build the room. Where do we build the room? It's eight foot by eight foot square. We built over at the Studio B, which is kind of for the focus media people. And we use all their lights and their sound stuff. And I mean, I have my own camera, but we use, and even the people that had to babysit us, it was great. And like they helped us out and like they helped us build it and put it together. And they gave us the money to like $200 or something to build the little cube. And then they use it for sets now. It's just, I don't know. I really love ACMI. And I think it's a really great thing. Thank you very much. Walter Locke, 233 Mass Avenge, Darlington. Welcome. And to curb my natural low-quaciousness, I have prepared my remarks. There would be trouble otherwise. You're going to make me check my watch now. Yeah, it'll go quickly. I was the community outreach coordinator for ACMI for its first seven plus years from early November of 2006 to late January of 2014. And before that in 2005 and 2006, I was a board member of Arlington Community Access, ACA, an intermediary organization interfacing between Comcast and Arlington Cable Viewers. In September 2006, following some years of public discussion and dedicated preparation, ACA and a group of Arlington citizens launched ACMI as, or to provide a communication platform for the town's diverse socioeconomic mix of residents. Arlingtonians sought, according to surveys taken at the time, a reliable and high quality service to connect them with town government, schools, businesses, interest groups, and each other for services and activities that would inform and enrich them and their community, our community. The benefits were many, especially, of starting that service. The benefits were many, especially over time. During my tenure at ACMI, the interests and concerns of viewers, local organizations, and town agencies were logged and addressed. The fees from licensed cable service providers collected by the town and provided contractually to ACMI by the Arlington Board of Selectment made possible the upgrade of equipment and expansion of personnel that has led to the development of a regionally awarded cable access station. And, I believe, to a constituency today of pleased viewers and town agencies and to a considerable reservoir of goodwill among Arlington's more evermore connected residents. Moreover, Arlington students, some of which you've been hearing from, town agency directors, nonprofit business administrators, and elders, have had the opportunity to learn video production skills and to create programming that had not been widely available by the cable service providers themselves. The result of providing this opportunity during the eight plus years at virtually no cost to ACMI members has been an enormous increase in local programming and more than a few ACMI video and TV producer members that went on from Arlington schools to college courses and then to jobs in the field. You just heard from a couple of them, I think. One more benefit worth mentioning, and this one, I think, is very important, is the small oasis that Community Cable Access TV is regarding the increasing concentration of media. Oh, oh boy. You picked a good time. You got a little run mic, keep going. Is the small oasis that Community Cable Access TV is regarding the increasing, just throw it against the wall. Yeah. This is the first one to hit the fair, you know. Regarding the increasing concentration of media ownership by commercially driven, ultra powerful mass market media corporations that are loyal primarily to sponsors, advertisers and government, rather than to the public interest. This serves to restrict the diversity of viewpoints, editorial independence and freedom of the press in general. If the company is dominating a particular media market, choose to suppress stories that do not serve their interests the public suffers, since they are not adequately informed on some crucial issues that may affect them. ACMI, I think, is an antidote to this growing problem. I, for one, am very eager to see the next decade of ACMI service to Arlington. Thank you. Thank you very much. Welcome. Thank you. I'm Hugh Hanley. I live at 36 Devereux Street in Arlington. I'm an early childhood educator who specializes in promoting musical play. And I'm here to just express my support and endorsement for the work that ACMI does. I first had a television show at ACMI in 1987 when I first started in my work specializing in promoting musical play. And in the past few years, I've produced two other series that promote musical play in the home and classroom. And I just wanted to say that ACMI is a marvelous organization. The equipment and facility is top-notch and it's matched by the professionalism of the staff and they've been very helpful. Anything that I've needed, if I can't get it myself, they've been able to help me to negotiate it and work through it. And it's just been a great help to me in my work. Thank you very much. Welcome. Good evening. My name is Barton Bruce. I live at 31 Bartlett Avenue. I've got my notes. I'm afraid, kept adding pieces and so I've got arrows. I'm gonna jump around a bit, trying to go fast. First of all, Arlington's ACMI is a gem. I've been an activist for some years on a National 501C3, trying to get things on the cable stations around the country. And on many occasions, I've had to help our volunteers wherever they are deal with stations. Most of the stations are nowhere near as helpful, friendly or knowledgeable as ACMIs. It's just a wonderful thing and it's been great for me personally to learn about the equipment and to be able to borrow what's necessary and all that. And it's really just a gem. We have a media system in this country right now which is giving one monolithic basically BS to the public and you don't hear what's going on in the world. Lots of big things going on around the world and what we get told is a very slanted one-sided thing. They've got Amy Goodminton-Marxie now which is good although she is a left-gate keeper. But, oh, I couldn't hear anything out there and now there's this roar outside. I've got bad ears and I didn't see any speakers here. So if I can get closer to this or they should have given you a, okay. Okay, well they said you have a short time so I was trying to go fast. Anyway, so ACMI is great and it needs more support. Town could easily use more than three channels, I think. I'm not sure if ACMI is ready for it but it should be and they should all be HD going on to 4K and above as soon as possible. There's no reason they should be being short-changed on that thing. I've got issues with some of the carriers. I currently using Verizon not because of any super love of any of them but the best of the available ones. I sat through all day FCC hearing with all five commissioners at Boston Hall, Harvard some years ago with the Chief Corporate Council of Comcast being in the witness stand and after listening to that I would like in some sense ask them if they've mended their ways. They were being characterized as evil hacker in the middle sending reset packets each direction to tell the other end to shut up and go away. This was because their network design could not adequately handle peer-to-peer traffic and peer-to-peer traffic is perfectly normal. I mean, yes, it's good for stealing videos and software but I download Amy Goodman's Democracy now rather than watch it over because of the times I wanna watch it, it's not when ACMI rebroadcast it and it's a 400 and something Meg that I get as a BitTarant, okay? And BitTarants are really good and all kinds of software are distributed that way, legal stuff if you wanna get a Buntu or Sussy or anything like that that comes down that way. But at that point Comcast was using these Sandvine machines to do very deep packet inspection and decide what you were doing and then savage your connection if they didn't like it and that's just outrageous. After that, they were going to dox's three modems and then they sued the FCC saying the FCC didn't have authority to do it which may or may not have been true but I'm not sure that's the kind of company I would wanna do business with. To their credit, they've finally gotten IMAP-4 for their email and Verizon doesn't even support it. I don't know about the rest of them but Verizon also is not going to IPv6 and that's sort of way, way too bad. I think because there's towns like Concord, Norwood and Braintree that have their own bandwidth to the houses, if Norwood can do it or Braintree can do it, Concord, I know can do it. I used to be their ISP for many years and that's the ISP, I choose it regional high school, Adelboro, Newton North and things like Merrimack Education and self-educational collaborative and lots more. So I've had some background in what all the connectivity issues are. But let's see. The arbitrary mesh networks are a growing thing. There's people in obscure little parts of Greece where there isn't good connectivity but they build these ad hoc networks and now that AC with beam point, this is Wi-Fi standard, is going to AD where they're going to huge number of gigahertz. The problem is that 60 gigahertz, the oxygen in the air actually is a barrier to long distance transmission. So you can have a lecture with 400 students each watching a high definition video that's different from the others. I'm not sure how far it goes across town but beamforming and arbitrary mesh networks could bring us to start with the MIT rooftop time thing. Forgive me but you're passing through three minutes so if you want to reach some concluding remarks that'd be appropriate. Okay, well even Molden had town-wide Wi-Fi for a while but they had twin towers and it was really low bandwidth and it was really for their inspectors but they let anybody on it. From those things up on the hill that finally replaced the hospital, you could have done some really neat things and there's no reason you couldn't be looking at doing your own fiber to the home with gigi as a starting point not as what they're trying to build up to. Thank you very much. There's more but. So I do encourage you to put it in writing and we'll accept it by email or in person in the Selectments Office through May 1st. Your thoughts are very appreciated. Thank you. My name is Michael Robichaux and I live on 130 George Street. I just want to quickly talk about three things. Past, present and future. Past, we'll start with when I was in high school I first had my encounter with Arrington TV Studio and I was very different then. The studio was very different then. Honestly, I didn't really appreciate what it was offering me and I didn't take full advantage of it and I regret that many mistakes later we came more to the present which was last year where I found myself kind of lost not literally but more in life but literally I did walk into the ACMI studio and I found there a community. I've lived in Arlington almost my whole life but I never understood as much as I did when I went to the ACMI studio and I found the voice of the community and my own voice which I've been discovering and through all the stuff I've done there at ACMI but now on to the future. When I first went to the studio I didn't quite fully take advantage of what I had to offer. As the years went on the technology advanced to the studio it grew bigger but more staff, lots of new things going on and I also at the same time was growing and changing and in the future I just hope that as the studio grows and changes that everyone else grows and changes alongside it that is involved with the studio and in terms of presenting all the shows that are made through ACMI so that the full potential of what we're doing at the studio is presented to everybody else in the town. So that's it. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. Welcome. Thank you. My name is Sundar Ramaswamy I live in 17 William Street, Allington. So I have two comments to make. One is as the town negotiates the next 10 years or five years or whatever with the cable service providers it's great to have three companies offering service over here but it is important that the community places certain obligations as part of the next 10 years in the sense that we are going to have enormous amount of information literacy that's going to be a demand that's going to be placed on our community and the folks who are going to walk into our community and therefore there should be some commitment received from the cable service companies that the infrastructure on which the current cable delivery is kind of networked into the community into our town be at least subject to some level of upgrade of some kind. I don't know what the negotiation is going to kind of bring about but that should be something that's firmly placed in the negotiating table because we are giving them an opportunity to service and in the bargain we are going to get something back as a negotiating negotiation is always about some give and take and I'm saying infrastructure improvement for how the cable gets delivered to us is very important, that's number one and I think the second aspect of that negotiating platform I believe should be about how the customers in and around, in our community are serviced both in terms of having a local some way by which the town residents get their grievances addressed in a timely fashion that should be I think a second plank that needs to be added in definitely I feel and the third thing is I think they need to give a voice to the community access channel like ACMI by giving them I think an HD broadcast facility for sure because I think this service demands it so that kind of purports me to the second part of my comments and that's about the kind of service that ACMI provides to this neighborhood, this community and to budding citizen journalism so I am kind of pretty particular about digital storytelling because as you grow older you realize that your ability to tell a story crisply in a very time-bound fashion by solving specific aspects of it is very critical and ACMI is by far the best show in town I can say that confidently because I have both my daughters kind of practically live there for better part of their days okay and so I can speak to what they've learned as part of that and what they have discovered about themselves and also about the community they live in by the facilities that are provided by ACMI and I think that they are ready for getting a much better deal in the cable infrastructure that our town is going to negotiate for the next 10 years or five years okay so I'll stop there and thank you. Thank you very much. Glenn, welcome. My name is Glenn Koenig and I've been a resident of Arlington for almost 40 years now. I served on town meeting for 16 years and I left town meeting to pursue other interests as they say which meant within a couple of years participating in the very first meetings in 1997 to begin ACMI development which was what eventually going to be called that. I am extremely proud of what has happened since then what the people who are running ACMI now have done with the station in terms of expanding its functions, getting more people involved and producing really quality programming. I don't think there's a single person in Arlington who wouldn't say that ACMI is an asset to this community in a number of different ways. Originally, public access was created because the equipment was expensive and there was only one way to get signal out to the citizens. We know that since we created ACMI and it went on and opened the studio in 2006 that YouTube has come out and now you can pick up your cell phone and make a video but the importance of the studio has to do with the collaboration of the community bringing people together to educate them about media which is something that you can't replace with technology or other channels on the internet. It's a unique service that is very important to this town. I'm here to support full continued funding both for capital expenditures and for operational expenditures as we go forward over the next 10 years. I think it's a disgrace that we don't have the same channel capacity as all the rest of the commercial channels that there should be three high definition channels and there should be provisions so that if the status quo of television transmission increases over the years to UHD and so forth which we see coming down the road technologically that ACMI should be given the same consideration as all those other channels so that you don't have to jump down to some other part of the band on your controller in order to watch it. Now I know there are a lot of people who watch on the internet and so on but there's still many people. I mean we have a diverse media landscape here in Arlington. There are many people who are still on the couch with a remote want to see it on their big screen. They're not gonna go on the internet and try and figure out how to find things to watch that way and I think that they deserve as good a service as anybody else. So I think that basically concludes my remarks and I want to thank you. Oh, the one more thing I wanted to say has to do with that it's not an ACMI factor it has to do with customer service and I even left Comcast. I'm not afraid to say that because the customer service although the people on the phone were polite they were not well trained and how the system actually worked and unfortunately when we get to the point where we're talking about this stuff about Verizon there is the same problem there. So it's not a problem that I think oh well one company's necessarily doing a lot better than the other but it's very frustrating to waste a lot of time to get simple factors adjusted or fixed or solved while you're trying to be on the phone with these companies and I'm certainly paying enough money every month that they could actually train their people better so I could get a straight answer when I call and I don't call unless I really have to. I go through all the other possible avenues to resolve my problem. I guess that's it for my remarks and I want to thank you and the committee for doing this work for the town. Thank you. Come on up. Welcome. Thank you. I'll keep this short. I'm exhausted. Address please. My name is Leonard Diggins at eight live at eight Windsor Street. Adam I don't know how you do it. So I saw you here this morning. I want to add that I think it would be really helpful if we had you know added bandwidth because everyone's used to looking at TV and high quality and no one spends any time down in the lower bandwidth. The other thing is that if we didn't have cable or the ACMI broadcasting what happens in government we'd be asking for it. We have that and it'd be nice if we had the ability to do more and I would actually ask the board select men to come up with ways that you know we could expand the use of what we have in order to make government more interactive. It might require some changes to the bylaws but I could imagine at a board select men meeting having people call in. I don't know if you'd like to have that happen but I think you know for people at home who can't make it I mean it might be a useful tool but just think creatively about how you can use this tool in order to really get the community more engaged with what goes on in government. And the last thing is it would be really good if the cable companies advertise me that they provide the service. As you've heard many people really appreciate what ACMI does, they do good work but I don't know how many people know about it. Certainly I don't know how many people who don't do it with us know about it and we all know the power of advertising and the benefit to the cable companies would be that people would see that they do provide a service because it's easy to hate the cable companies but if you know they provide a service or benefit that you don't know about it would help you like them more. So thank you very much. Thank you. Are there other members of the public who wished, Glenn, second time? I neglected to give my address which is 16 Hopkins Road for the record. Thank you. Thank you, Glenn. Anyone else from the public who wishes to come to the mic? All right, that concludes that first portion which is the members of the public. The next up we're going to have the Arlington Cable Advisory Committee members. Mr. Maher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm John Maher, Chairman of the Cable Advisory Committee. I reside at 990 Massachusetts Avenue in Arlington. It is my task tonight to perfect the public record and ask that certain exhibits be admitted into the record. As indicated in your initial remarks, the town caused, according to federal, pursuant to federal and state law, notice of this hearing to be published in the local newspaper Arlington Advocate, at least a second notice, two times, a second notice, not less than 14 days prior to this hearing that was accomplished. And I ask that that notice be admitted as exhibit one. Without objection, we'll add that. We're over the town, through the town manager's office, conducted a online survey, eliciting responses from the folks in town concerning their desires with regard to and their satisfaction with both ACMI and the various cable subscribers. We had 10 questions. I won't go into each. I could observe, I'd like to observe that the general response was the overwhelming majority was generally satisfied with the cable provider's performance in town, and that were the higher majority, a very strong sentiment in town that the respondents to the survey indicated their general satisfaction. In fact, enthusiasm for ACMI. And I would ask that that survey be admitted into the public record as exhibit two. Without any objection. I would also ask that the signing sheet tonight be admitted into the public record as exhibit three. Without any objections, it's also added. I would ask that the transcript of the hearing be admitted as exhibit four. Without any objection, that's also added. And I believe that there was something given by Mr. Radosha, that be admitted to the public record as exhibit five. Without objection. I think also there will be a capital plan provided by ACMI tonight, and I would just indicate that I would ask that that be admitted into the public record as exhibit six. Also without objection. There is a standard question that is posed to each of the cable companies. And by the way, I wanna thank Comcast for being here tonight. I want the record to the reflect, however, that Verizon at RCN was duly notified according to state law by certified mail return receipt requested, their attendance is not required. But I think we appreciate Comcast taking the trouble to be here tonight. And I would like the record to the reflect that notification was appropriately given according to law to all of the cable companies. Without objection, that's added to the record. I can be reached, by the way, by anybody who has any comments about this. We welcome them wholeheartedly. My name is John Maher, M-A-H-E-R by telephone number 7815891999. I may be reached electronically at Johnny Cape, J-O-H-N-N-Y-C-A-P-E, like Cape Cod, at hotmail.com. Any comments can also be forwarded to the Selectman's Office in writing or electronically. And also to the town manager at A-Champdallain at town.arlington.ma.us. And my final task is to pose the boilerplate question to all three companies. And we will be eliciting responses from Comcast tonight. And I simply ask whether or not there are any, to their knowledge, is there any disputes, problems, litigation of any kind that relate to the town of Arlington or generally with regard to the viability of the respective companies that would materially affect the capability of those companies to provide satisfactory and adequate cable services to the town of Arlington? We'd look for that response right now. No, no, Mr. Maher, I'm not. Thank you, sir. We didn't anticipate there was any, but and I would just respectfully suggest to the gentleman and to each of the cable companies that this is an ongoing obligation and that if anything a material, that would affect their viability as a company or their ability to provide these services to the town that they are required to advise us in a expeditious fashion. And that is all I have. Thank you. Any other members of the cable advisory committee who wanted to come up? All right, the last item, excuse me, second to last item on our agenda is the Arlington Community Media testimony. And then our last thing, I've failed to warn the gentleman from Comcast if they wished you have an opportunity to speak at the end, but we'll hear from ACMI first. Norm McLeod on the Executive Director for Arlington Community Media. I live at 77 Tanager Street here in Arlington. Welcome. This is the ascertainment report that the board and the cable advisory committee had asked ACMI to produce. And in this is the capital plan that Mr. Marr had referenced. This is, I'd like to submit, this is item six, was it? Is that correct? Six. Okay, so I'd like to thank the board of select bin and all the cable providers, Comcast, for their support from the very beginning of ACMI in 2006. Just have to comment on one thing. All of the folks here who have come here to support ACMI have actually written letters that are in that ascertainment report. There are actually 60 letters in that report in support of ACMI. And it's very humbling for myself and for the staff to hear what these folks have to say about us. Too often, you know, we're busy doing our job and we don't really know what people are really thinking or feeling inside. So I've told my staff, make sure you don't have, get any larger hat than you've gotten right now. We've come a long way since 2006 with only two employees, two desks, no computers. Well, Comcast left, they took everything, what can I tell you? Now we have a station of nine employees, six terabyte video servers, a second location called Studio B on Mass Ave. A news team called Arlington Public News within terms from five area colleges and a variety show, Steve Katzow Show, which is literally seen around the world. Steve Katzow Show from this little access station in Arlington, Mass is seen in Japan, Uruguay, Europe, you name it. It's all by satellite, of course. And it's all English speaking channels, of course. But we've come a long way, certainly. We are, at the current time, one of the larger stations in the area and we do have a very favorable reputation. My hat gets bigger when I hear these things. ACMI is known as a very active, a very vibrant station with certainly very talented staff. In fact, many stations oftentimes contact us asking us for a tour or information of what we're doing or how we do it and what equipment we are using. We've become a beta station for a lot of new equipment that's coming on the market now. And a lot of the folks around the area know that ACMI is basically always on the cutting edge. Over the years, we've tried to become a very integral part of the Arlington community and I believe we have succeeded. Especially when I look at the more than five pages in the ascertainment report that lists the non-profit and educational organizations that we've been connected with over the last nine years. Five pages. We're a busy station, as I mentioned. We produce programming with Arlingtonians from all walks of life in all ages and we've covered as many Arlington public education and governmental events as we possibly can. Unfortunately, ACMI programming itself, in terms of its descriptions, can't be seen on the cable provider's program guides. In fact, this is one of the complaints that we've heard over and over again. We need to have the cable providers make the ACMI programming descriptions available to the viewer, instead of the guide only indicating ACMI programming as being quote, local or public. Much of ACMI programming is a result of the many workshops ACMI offers to our membership and it's most exciting to note that some of our youth has been mentioned before and our interns have gone on to production positions in the greater broadcast world. There was one young man in fact who went to Ithaca College, he had so much experience, they actually asked him to become a teaching assistant. When he graduated, he joined another production company here in the Boston area and he actually went to the Soviet, Russia now, to the Sochi Games. So he was helping out the Sochi Games. He's now back but he's so committed and has been so committed to ACMI, he's volunteered his time in the summer to come back in, help us out technically and teach a lot of the students who are coming in for a summer program which we offer at the end of July, a full week long summer program. By the way, the estimated equivalent value of these workshops returned to Arlington this past year totals about $325,000 using Boston commercial rates. Now, with all this programming, ACI members certainly do use a great deal of ACMI equipment to produce the amount of programming that they do. Now, you consider that for $40 membership a year, that's the cost of a good dinner out, if that, they can have access to a quarter of a million dollars worth of equipment. And in fact, the total estimated equivalent Boston commercial rental rate value of ACMI equipment used by Arlington residents this past year reached just over a quarter of a million dollars. First time that has happened is because our programming has increased, our membership has increased, we're doing more news, we have more interns, the results of that, the equipment's being used more. When you look at that Boston rate, we're giving that equipment to the Arlington resident, if you look at it from the Boston rates, yes, it's over a million dollars. With fewer exceptions, all of our equipment is high definition, HD state of the art, but we don't have an outlet for the HD signal. You've already heard this, I'm sure Comcast has heard this from every other accident station that they have been going to recently. HD is where it's at. We have to dumb down our high definition signals to make it analog. HD is not a luxury anymore. It's very quickly becoming a necessity to transmit a very high quality signal that's equal to the cable providers, other channels in order for us to attract and keep viewers to our station. Give you an example, Belmont did an ascertainment survey and they did a survey similar to what we did last October. One of the questions was, do you watch your local channel? The answer was no, and the further question was, do you watch it in standard definition? 30% of the respondents said no, they don't. They will only watch HD. It makes sense, that's where things are headed. We are ready to transmit an HD, but cable providers have not yet provided the bandwidth for us to do so. Consequently, we are requesting that all of our channels be upgraded to HD as soon as possible. So what's the future, aside from HD? ACMI has plans to create small media production modules at each of the elementary schools, similar to the studio created at the Odyssey Middle School. We created an emergency alert system for police and fire use. We plan on purchasing and building out a mobile production truck to increase coverage of sports and other civic events. Arlington Public News should be expanded along with the staffing in order to cover more Arlington News events. A radio station startup is in the works, and of course the upgrading of all of our current equipment to tomorrow's technology, whatever that may be, is necessary at least once, if not twice in the next 10 years. What's the depreciation rate for laptops? These projects and upgrades will of course require operational and capital funding. So, in conclusion, ACMI's ability to continue to operate for the benefit of the Arlington community at current and future levels is entirely dependent on maintaining the current operational funding and increasing the capital funding provided by the cable licenses, licensees. We hope that the cable providers, the cable advisor committee, and the board of selectmen will support us in our request for full funding and all of our future endeavors. Thank you for listening. Thank you very much. All right, oh, I didn't realize we had a double hitter. We do. Mr. Moderator. Mr. Moderator. Mr. Moderator. I'm Mr. Moderator. I'm not Mr. Moderator here. My name's John Leone. I'm the president of Arlington Community Media, ACMI, as I call it, ACMI as they call it. I've been with ACMI since 1997 when Glenn referenced earlier, we first started. I've been the president since the early 90s and I was, John Maher and myself and Glenn are the only ones left over from the last contract signing with Comcast. That was a difficult negotiation but Arlington got what we needed. We got the 5% capital. We got, at that time, we got $33,000 from Comcast. We eventually got 40 from Verizon. At that point, we had one employee, Jeff Monroe, who's still with us. Jeff was my first hire because I was the president and I got to hire him. The next person we hired was Norm. Norm's still with us. We now have nine employees. We've gone from one studio up the heights. We now have three. The one up the heights at Park Ave, the one on Mass Ave and effectively returned the coat room of this building into a studio with Adam, the town manager. We effectively rewired the whole building which eliminated a lot of need for running cables everywhere. That being said, there are also three members of the board with us tonight. Mike Healy, Marty Thrope and Linda Olson who are back there. We're gonna spare you their speeches. I'm here to talk more about the numbers. Back me to 5013C Corporation. We have nine employees. We are one of the largest peg access studios in the Boston area, which kind of if you look at it makes us all bigger in the New England area because this is where everyone is. We cover numerous town government programming. We have peg three channels, peg, public education and government. We need to maintain all three of those in the next contract. Our programming's seen worldwide, as Norm mentioned. Currently receive about between $850,000 and $900,000 a year and FCC mandated 5% revenue. We spend almost all of that on our staff and our studios. We get a mere $73,000 a year in capital. The 5% revenue must stay. We need to have that in order to keep our staff where it is. As you heard from everybody who spoke today, we're doing a good job. We can do a better job, but to do that we have to have the 5% revenue. The capital. The capital is the same dollar figure it was 10 years ago. Due to inflation that's effectively half. We can't continue to buy the equipment we need to provide our LinkedIn citizens with the service they deserve, with the quality TV they deserve to give you guys a nice picture when you're up there in the select miserable. Remember when we first started? We inherited Comcast junk basically. We had to throw it away. We had to pay to get rid of it. We started off with some standard definition cameras over the years. We've replaced them. Those cameras are now HD. Unfortunately, if we see it in standard definition we can produce it in high definition if they'd allow us to. What does that mean need from the next contract? What does Anatolians deserve for the next contract? In order to produce what they want we need the 5% revenue. That's a given. We can't go any lower than that. We need to have the capital which we're now getting at least doubled, maybe more. Because even if they doubled it now it's where we were 10 years ago and in 10 years we'll be halfway behind the eight ball again. So we've got to think long term. So maybe not seem like a lot of money right now but to a giant corporation like Verizon, like Comcast, RCN to drop in the bucket. They're multi-billion dollar corporations. Maybe million. I won't give them that. But for us to keep technically relevant we must get at least double on the Comcast. What else? We're not asking for much. We want three HD channels. Anatolians pay a lot of money and cable fees every year. Think of your cable bill. And you have to watch it on a standard definition. We can pump it out. We have the capacity right about building a wall for HD. We have to hook up to this little tiny pipe that comes over your TV in 1950s technology. Bring us into the 21st century. Bring us into 1950 at least. Give us the three HD channels. We can do it. We need to do it. We can do it because ironically we can stream to people's computers and phones in HD which we do. We have video demand and live streaming in high definition but on your 60 inch plasma TV, your 60 inch LED you're looking at a 1950 picture. No one does. No one wants to do that. I look at it, town meeting, I look horrible up there. I mean, let's face it. I want to be on HD when I'm moderating. You got to give us three HD channels. Bring us into the 21st century. What else do we need? We need a program guide. Right now it says channel 26. You don't know what channel it is. You don't know what town it is. It says local access programming. It's useless. People can't even tell where they are on the dial by looking at the program guide. We can do it. We have everything in our new six terabyte server. We can label the program. We can do a data dump into this system. We can do a file transfer, FTP to files over to them. We'll email them the files. Give us access to it. We'll do it, but we are not allowed to. We need the program guide. So people will know that the select men are on it. This hour they can set the ativo to it. They can set their DVR that they're paying Comcast to use to record you guys, to record whatever they want, the sports, anything else, the locally produced programs. Very simple. That which should be in the contract, we should be allowed to have that. It shouldn't be denied to the citizens of Arlington. And the last, this is a little different, closed captioning. We do have hearing impaired people in Arlington. We'd like the ability to do closed captioning, but technically I'm not sure how it works. I think we need even more bandwidth, but that's, I'll leave that to Mr. Marta figure out. So what does we want? 5%, double the capital, three HD channels in program guide. And make your customer service people another little nicer. They kind of mean when I call them up. So I left you guys. They basically told me to take a hike. No, I will never, most people, I called to ask about my rate hike, which is 25 bucks every year, no matter what. This is really funny. Oh, sorry. I'm speaking to the jury. 25 dollars a year, no matter what. I called to negotiate it with them and they basically, I said, I'll switch. And they said, no one ever does. No one switches. And I said, well, I have a rise in a Comcast to choose from. They said, no one switches, it's too much of a pain. I switched five minutes later, dropped my box off. Their customer service, not that the others are any better, but theirs were particularly rude that night. But that's a side from why I'm really here, which is the HD channels, the revenue, and the capital. We need those in the contract. Arlington citizens deserve them. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Leonid. Is there anyone else from ACMI? Did you wish to speak this evening? Thank you for coming. If there's no further, seeing no further testimony, that concludes tonight's public hearing. I'll keep tonight's hearing open for 16 days until noon on May 1st, 2015, in order to receive additional testimony. Interested parties are encouraged to submit written testimony on any renewal-related issue discussed tonight, or regarding any overall cable issue. Written testimony or comments may be selected to the Board of Selectments Office by noon on May 1st. The office is right in the corner over there. Those comments should be sent to the Board of Selectments Office Town Hall, 730 Mass Avenue, Arlington Mass, 02476. If you have any questions about tonight's hearing or the cable television renewal process, please call the Board of Selectments Office, 781-316-3020, or the Chair of the Cable TV Advisory Committee, Mr. John Maher, 781-589-1999. Thank you all for attending tonight's public ascertainment hearing. A motion to adjourn is in order. So moved. Excuse me, thank you. We are adjourning only the Board of Selectments Meeting. The hearing is still open until May 1st. Motion second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you all for coming.