 Wonderful thank you good morning. It's really wonderful to see such a big turnout for something I know that we all care deeply about. I'm Becca Ballant. I am the senator from Wyndham County. I serve on economic development and housing and also the finance committee and I chair this workgroup. In a moment I'm gonna go around the table and have everybody introduce themselves so that you know who's representing which constituency on this group. So if we could start over here with Karen. I'm Lauren Glendavidian. I am the executive director of CCPB Center for Media and Democracy and I'm here on behalf of the One Access Network. 25 access centers that serve us across the state. Good morning. I'm Dan Glanville with Contest. I'm employed by Contest but I am the industry representative on the group. Good morning. I'm representative of Wytham-Tochka. I represent Sean Lott and I'm on the Energy Technology Committee and Vice-Chair in this committee. I'm Clay Purvis. I represent the Department of Public Service. I'm Kyle Landis-Marinello. I'm general counsel at the public utility commission. Good morning. So for those of you who are not here to testify and are just happened to be in the state house today and popped in to see what we're doing which happens all the time here I'm not clear. This is the Peg Access Study Committee and we are here because of a section in Act 79 which was the broadband bill and we're here to try to figure out going forward how to make sure that Peg Access TV in Vermont remains financially viable. So this is part of our charge is having a public hearing today though each of our previous committee meetings has been open to the public and the committee meeting immediately following this hearing will also be open to the public so you can check out all of the previous testimony by checking out the film that's been taken by Orca TV and I think distributed to other access channels around the state. So if you have not yet signed up to testify today it's important to get your name on this list and see our committee assistant Peggy who's over here by the computer. So we're going to limit testimony since we do have a big crew today we're going to limit testimony to five minutes and although I often like to be gentle with people I'm going to be pretty firm about five minutes because it's really unfair when you have a public hearing and everyone on the front end gets to say everything they want to say and the folks at the end get the chat so we're not doing that today keeping it to five minutes and of course if you don't need all five minutes that's helpful to the folks coming out for you. So first up I have Steve Pappas from Plainsfield if you'll come up here we are on the record it's being recorded both film and recorded for our records here at the State House so if you could start by stating your name for the record and if you represent a constituency other than just a citizen just please let us know. Welcome. Thank you and good morning everybody. My name is Stephen Pappas I am the executive editor of the Times Argus and Rotland Herald newspapers for the last seven years I have been an advocate for peg access not just because of the role that it plays in providing a voice to our communities but rather how it has become one of the most important defenses of our democracy. Like newspapers peg stations need unique local content to make it indispensable to its audience and like newspapers station directors are coming up with innovative ways to generate streams of revenue that's why we're here venturing well outside that comfort zone of the existing business model. Like newspapers if peg access does not pivot and adapt the end to be insightful but I'm hopeful in fact I have spoken before state regional and national groups explaining how community journalism and peg access are powerful allies when it comes to value credibility and sustainability and I believe so strongly in fact that I have served on the board of directors of CBTV in the area for a few years as its chair helping to negotiate that station certificate of public good and the contract the charter communications. I have had my own public affairs show for three years taping some 90 episodes and interviewing state leaders and Vermont celebrities. I have testified to the SEC and Congress about public access regularly lobbying our delegation and through my newspaper we have created a series called into the issues that partners with public access to bring in experts on key issues of the day most recently taking a homelessness and opioid crisis and more. ICPEG is a tool and a resource. You can't get any more local than public access. Very few of us are willing to sit through long public meetings for hearings although I do pay people to do that. Yeah peg stations provide thousands of hours of gavel to gavel coverage that chronicle just how decisions are being made and my reporters even reach out to the local peg stations to get copies of meetings they missed or to review sections of meetings that got out of hand or were confusing and that's what is unique that that access is available to every Vermont. In editorials I often point out to the point of themes of community building civic engagement or seeking other perspectives in order to better understand our friends and neighbors in these challenging times. PEG provides it probably in better ways than my very own newspapers. Through its hours of unique content in hand programming it shows us intimately what community looks like and what our democracy is like. That lens brings us together like no other today. So I don't think anyone would disagree we need that right now. In my editorial this weekend which appeared in both newspapers I wrote well localism hinges on involvement. PEG provides a medium for our responsibility and accountability. At a local level what could be more important than gathering the pieces and parts of our community and serving the stewards for its protection and preservation. Thank you. Thank you so much. Before you get out of the witness chair we do have a little bit of time if you don't use the balance of the time I just want to see if anyone on the panel had questions for you. Can you say how CBTV is diversifying its revenue? They're working in different ways to I'm not on the board anymore so I stepped off the board but it's my understanding that the board there and its executive director have been seeking sponsorship from other groups within the community doing partnerships with other folks in the community charging small amounts for access to the to-do production to use and prevent things of that nature but mostly it's an aggressive push towards sponsorship long-term sponsorship much again to what other public television stations are doing over time. Thank you Steve. Thank you for making the trip. That wasn't that far. Next up, Corbridge from down my way, Brattleboro. Thank you for making the trip. Were you in the fog like I was this morning? Totally in the fog. Hi everybody. I'm gonna get this under five minutes by speaking fast so apologies you have to slow down the tape later to understand what I'm saying. My name is Corbridge I'm executive director of Brattleboro Community Television and I have the which has the distinction of being Vermont's first public access station established in 1975. I want to thank members of this committee for your work looking for new funding sources in the face of a shifting telecommunications landscape and they need to ensure a stable funding source for the future of Peggy Vermont. As you've learned cable fees the primary source of funding for community TV stations have declined and are anticipated to decline further. I'm here today to tell you what our station has done to diversify revenues and to what extent those revenues can offset the decline. BCTV is a relatively small Vermont station with a budget of around three hundred thousand dollars serving eight towns. We have four full-time employees and seven part-time field staff. Between the staff and our 50 volunteer producers BCTV annually produces an average of 1200 original local programs with the same number of programming hours aired on our two channels. This volume of programming is equivalent to the output of much larger stations which speaks to our efficiency. A testament to the quality of our programming is having received national awards for overall excellence three times over the past four years. In an area of the state that has no commercial television the public good that BCTV provides is without question we are the only source of content for viewers and the only way for residents to air their views on cable. To provide these services BCTV depends on Comcast cable fees for approximately 75 percent of our budgeted income. Two years ago we absorbed an eight percent or twenty thousand dollar decline after Comcast adopted a gap accounting change. On learning of the SEC rule making last fall and the further threat that it poses BCTV's board of directors looked for changes that we could make to increase of revenues. Diversification of revenues is nothing new to BCTV we started years ago in order to be able to grow our level of service to the community and it's generated as much as 16 percent of our income. As an example of how one station is trying to meet this funding challenge here are the changes that we've made and the hope for impact on future budgets. Municipal fees. In the past our agreement with towns was that they would receive coverage of regular select board meetings in town meeting day without charge. For the first time I asked each of our towns for a modest level of support based on the number of residents. The increase we're anticipating is $15,000 from that change. Another change was to our membership fees structure. In the past members paid $20 annual dues though at least 50 percent paid $10 as seniors for unlimited use of our equipment, fill up facilities and support. Our new fee structure asked members to contribute according to their frequency of use and by the value what they use. So for instance a community member who wants to do a weekly studio show will pay more than someone who wants to check out a camera a few times. The increase we're anticipating is $3,000 going from about $1,000 to $4,000. Donations and underwriting. In the past it was a benefit to our economically strapped region that BCTV did not compete for the limited fundraising dollars with hundreds of nonprofits seeking support from a small number of individuals and businesses. Now we are not only competing for those dollars but the time that we're going to take to fundraise will reduce our time providing services. The increase we're hoping for is $10,000 from about $7,000 to $17,000. Production services. Like underwriting this is an activity we've been engaged in for years. We restrict our production work to public access projects so it's not a separate business. While cable revenues have sub-dised this work it made it possible to charge an affordable rate to nonprofits. We've increased these rates to cover more of the costs. The increase we're anticipating is $5,000 going from about $35,000 to $40,000. Even if our goals are met and income from other sources increases by $33,000 it will only increase the contribution of these sources from 16 to 21% of our budget. While we can grow other income slowly over time there's no scenario in which we can serve the public as we do now without a stable ongoing and legislative source of support. The purpose of my testimony has been to demonstrate that our organization is doing everything possible to diversify our income streams. We are looking to this committee to identify legislative revenue sources to offset the decline so that we can keep providing our critical public access services to residents of Balbro and Wyndham County. Thank you again for your work on this important issue. Court, 30 seconds to spare. Well done. Any quick questions? True professional experience. Yes, indeed. Do you have that in writing? Yeah, those numbers especially. Submit electronically to to petty over here and if you need to connect. I've got Mike's female address. Yes, wonderful that work too. Great, thank you so much. Next on my list is Matt Kelly from Burlington. Anybody wants me to read your testimony really fast? Yes, right. My name is Matt Kelly. I'm an independent producer from Burlington, Vermont. Full disclosure, my local public access invites me to host their election coverage. Very grateful for it because it allows me to be part of civil and civic discourse. I'm going to show you right now 30 second public service announcement that I had an idea to create after I learned that the state of Vermont is doing early voting. Figuring that if I didn't know it, other people would not know it and this public service announcement would be helpful. You put the microphone down. And if I'm just pull the microphone. Put it near there. Vote early. It's easy. Just bust the ballot. Complete your ballot and fail your ballot. That way, when someone asks you, have you voted yet? You can say yes, I voted. I'm pretty proud of it. You should be. It brought the governor, the lieutenant governor, their challengers, Randy Brock and Gino Sullivan to the table. A very across the board, non-political initiative to promote early voting. It was produced to broadcast standards. I went to every television station in my market. No one aired it. I hope that shocks you as much as it does me. WCAS would not air it. WPTZ did not air it. Fox 44 channel 22 did not air it. It's an initiative to promote civic participation in our most treasured institution. The only institution that aired it and produced it is our public access stations. It went up to then and hopefully other stations pulled it down. We produced a local one as well that brought in our city councillors. It's a horrific indictment. And so what I want to talk about is that and thank you for our local public access to do it and offer three potential solutions for funding. And the first is on national level. If Citizens United told us anything, money is speech and let's now embrace Citizens United for what it actually is. The attempt to demonetize public access is a violation of Citizens United. And let's all get behind it and use that now for its intended good to support public access. The second is on a statewide basis. We just removed and got rid of Vermont life. And yet year after year we spend hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars on that initiative often going into the red. Let's now dedicate that money to producing content that supports our public access station through a travel and tourism message, a diversity message, a governor's message, an economic development message, whatever the message is that the state wants, we have the largest unwired network that Van has created. Take that money, allow each public access station to download content on a revenue share basis where each time they error they get a revenue share from the state. Come up with the funding formula from that but that's a statewide initiative to fund it. On a local basis I approach this to my local public access. 5 Cent Freedom Fridays leverage the refundable deposits. If 1500 people in our local community get a bin and put in a dollar in refundables every week, 52 weeks a year, that's $75,000. Start doing the math. So one minute left. Okay it's pretty significant. Okay so federal, state, and local. I want to thank you all for really your time to address this for our public access for the thousands of hours of local content that they produce that our local media isn't offering someone like me an opportunity to participate in. Finally I'll say I'm making a documentary on the downtown mural. A lot of it is being done by B-roll footage from the coverage of our city council meetings that only occurs in our public access station. Thank you. Thank you Mel. Next up Michael Billingsley from Plainfield. Thank you. Thank you for coming. It's a great pleasure to be here. I like many others in this room, Lauren Gwenn and many others in this room have spent a great deal of my life supporting and promoting public access television. In the past 40 years I was for 20 years the director of the image club which was a pre-access committee production facility that over 20 that 20 years trained about 300 independent producers, many of whom jumped on board as soon as Lauren, I, and Sam Press at the department public service were able through the public service board to mandate that funding from cable operations would come to the local producers and since that time after leaving Montpelier advisory cable advisory board after that was established and later became Orca went on to direct Amherst Community Television where Dan and I were more or less sort of nemesis for one another from time to time and then to the Board of Brattlebroke Community Television and stepping off that board after several years to be the interim director before Court arrived and I more recently have been and all that time have been an independent producer often with funding from the government many of these funds came from the government even before access was formally built into the Vermont legislative process we also were funded by the Vermont council on the arts the national endowment for the arts the national endowment for the humanities these funds made it possible to train people bring them into the production community and provide them with the tools to do that my prepared statement is to say this probably covering a lot of familiar ground that you've heard over and over going to do it again public access developed television with its public educational and government video production and screening is a linchpin of participatory democracy in the United States independent locally generated content makes this possible as you know peg access funding now shrinks along with cable television providers gross income this undercuts the financial support for local peg programming staff and production facilities loss of such support potentially silences the independent voices of Vermont's community video producers who are these community producers they are people of all ages backgrounds and persuasions who volunteer to create public interest programming which ranges from how-to shows local newscasts and programming investigative reporting arts and music shows with live guests and interviews event documentation political forums and in studio performances all the way to educational collaborations with schools including in many cases course and workshop presentations student projects school sports and performances school board meetings and parents information along with college student work and documentation of local politics and town meetings this is one of the significant ways by which Vermont knows its own people peg access is the living pulse of community creativity history collective learning storytelling and participatory government our own neighbors and community leaders are producers of video content when i worked as a media administrator in Montpelier Amherst, Massachusetts in Brattleboro for example two eleven-year-olds produced without any adult involvement a weekly news magazine about their town school children and college students did investigative reported teenagers made prize winning animations and even feature length scripted films adult producers made documentaries about their communities of color their countries of origin and their hobbies and hosted shows about world music local artists and crafts people recorded initiatives for addressing conservation and climate change documented outdoor sports and interviewed community elders this is how we know ourselves so Michael you have one minute left all right all of this is was accomplished via the existing federal mandates that the cable television industry support video production in their client communities using a portion of the money that they earned in those communities i appeal to this committee and to the Vermont legislature to craft a sound support network by which all media content providers which would include cable telephone and internet to send a portion of their local income back to their client Vermont communities which generate that income pig access has become essential to maintaining a healthy creative and informed democracy thank you so much next up is another michael i'm going a hard time reading the last name michael from rockingham smith okay i ought to be a little funny because it's so common that's right so if you'll just wait one moment before you start okay welcome thank you my neck of the woods all right um well my name is Michael smith i'm the currently the president of the board of directors of falls area community television where the cable access pig provider in fellas falls uh i've been i've been involved for about 10 years with pigs so i'm relatively new compared to everyone else that's been testifying um i submitted some written testimony i'm a little uncomfortable doing it in in speech but i'm going to open with just my quote the threats of freedom of speech writing in action are often trivial in isolation but they're cumulative in their fact and unless checked lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen and that's by george orwell from 1984 um i would like to say that pig access television allows people to think their own thoughts and then transmit those thoughts to others and to me that is the fundamental right of our citizens and um it's the fundamental value of pig access i would say that one of my quotes is everything not all flowers or roses and not all content on pig television is polished and well done but i think that fact brings out the the value of a code and in that it is people it's citizens they're saying their thoughts and they're and they're speaking their mind and it may not be um political speech it may be grandma kitty reading to the kids but it is really valuable and reducing the amount or reducing the access to or reducing the volume of pig television is really reducing speech and when we reduce speech we reduce our ability to think we reduce our ability to form ideas and we reduce our ability to function as a government and i think that is the value of pig television and i think it is also the reason i'm here today is that i value that and i'm hoping that we'll come up with some solutions to this problem i've entertained questions um we are doing we are currently developing strategies to diversify our income mainly going to tour the patreon style model um sorry again a patreon uh i don't know if you know people gather the fundraise online by offering up content for sponsorship sort of idea but it's it's patreon it's creating patrons of the arts and so some artists are using it now we're looking at that sort of idea um we are really small we're about half the size of bridal girl um and we manage on two full-time employees we have two channels that we do 24-7 on Comcast and two channels we do 24-7 on Vermont telecom or VTEL um we with two employees any cuts in our funding really cut to the bone it's not like we can just cut you know you don't you almost go out of existence we can go um so thank you for your time and entertain any questions otherwise are you doing any collaboration with other access centers do you mean like um we're part of van right um personally i don't but um i know that we go to the band meetings and we do things with um some of our current our former staff work at i mean brow girl and we like collaborating with them but um i wouldn't say we have a formal collaboration i was just wondering if you were considering any shared expenses or not at this point i mean we're still one of the things that we're working one of it's we're still on a level of uncertainty we're not sure what this what this is what the impact is going to be there's not been real um fine line drawn i don't know how much time i have left it on you have 40 seconds left you're doing great and we don't i mean just to be completely transparent we don't either that is part of our charge right to try to get our hands around that yeah that's i guess the uncertainty is is one of the things that makes it difficult for us to come out and say well we're going to do this or we're going to do that um but we you know we haven't come up with that yet thank you so much really appreciate it so next up we have um acel emmons and charlie taylor from charlotte feel free to bring another chair up if you'd like if you those want to sit together and are you five minutes each or five minutes together um it's fine either way just wanting to know we're just we're going to do it together okay great good morning my name is estelle emmons and i am an eighth grader at charlotte central school my name is charlie taylor and i'm also an eighth grader charlotte central school have you ever had the opportunity to talk live with an astronaut while they are living and working in space on board the international space station it's a very rare opportunity but two years ago our entire middle school had a live video conversation with astronaut drew boost gal and scott tingle and it only was able to happen thanks to the support our school received from rhtn our local community media centers we learned about the international space station and how it is used as an orbiting laboratory to help nasa learn how humans might travel to mars and beyond we started by researching all the different kinds of experiments that take place during the mission and then picked one that seemed especially interesting i picked adc and microgravity which dancer antibody drug conjugates the research is about targeting cancer cells and finding treatment for cancer patients now and in the future and i picked the cool flames investigation cool flames happens when gas is burning at the perfect temperature where there is no flame and the gas burns very slowly so that more fuel is used to power the rocket instead of losing fuel from heat at the video conference i remember it started with mission control calling out to the iss is this is houston do you copy and then charlotte central school this is the mission to fill the economy and from that point on it was just like we had scott and drew with us in the gym we could see them floating around the iss they passed the microphone back and forth it was sort of would just float right there in front of them it was crazy to see actual people pointless in space many of the kids in our class were able to come up to the microphone and ask the astronauts questions about our experiments including me we were trying to find out information that would help us with our final project which was to create a short video for nasa that would help explain the experiment we were learning about to other middle school students i asked if they had ever been in any emergency situations if so what happened thankfully the answer is no i remember some of the questions were what suggestions do you have for someone that wants to be an astronaut and work for nasa someday and another was how does microgravity affect your daily activities like sleeping or rinsing your toothbrush everything worked really smoothly during the 30 minute downlink it was amazing to think that we were really talking to live to two people who were flying around the earth at 17 thousand miles per hour our gym was packed with students and lots of parents and community members that came all came over to be part of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when the downlink was done our work was just getting was just getting going over the next few weeks gene frera and ross ransom from rytn came over to help us and our teachers learned how to make a great video i don't think mr miller and mrs gray really had a lot of experience with video and so they were learning right along with us we learned about a and b roll footage about how to write a good script and they taught us how to use the program we video on our chrome books to pull everything together today rytn came over and set up two filming studios in our library and we each came down to practice and film the names of our videos then we spent the next week really working on our editing adding in pictures that explained our experience and editing our soundtracks so everything made sense and was interesting to watch at the end of two weeks our class had made more than 20 different videos we watched each of each other and it was very neat to see how much we learned considering that one in the beginning some of us didn't even know what the international space station was that was two years ago and since then we have used the learning that we picked up from the unit in a bunch of different ways one example is our personal interest project during this project you can pick anything you would like to learn or make this year i decided to create a short film and my experience with rytn definitely supported that decision thank you for the opportunity to share about our work with our local community new media center we have read that there are a number of challenges to being able to continue the funding for these centers across the state and we wanted to share how important we think it is that we and our teachers are able to continue to be able to access their expertise it truly provided us with an out-of-this-world experience and we know it would not have happened without rytn thank you thank you thank you so much and do you have a teacher with you today uh yes and you are i'm erlan billard i'm scheduled to speak next wonderful great well done really well done thank you for for coming i used to teach eighth grade so i am just beaming like with every bit of fiber in me so thank you for coming here and sharing your experiences with us and i just want to say that i appreciate your involvement uh being from show on myself thank you next up alan miller so good morning i'm alan miller uh representing champlain valley school district charlotte central school and one of several proud teachers of charlotte and stell so thanks for the opportunity to have them here and um my role is i'm the visual learning leader and the instructional coach at charlotte central school which basically means i'm responsible for professional development for teachers and especially helping them integrate technology and meeting boys working with our students um i just want to say that from the time i've taken on this role three years ago the partnership with our community media center and rytn has been instrumental and so that's why i'm here kind of speaking on behalf of that partnership you just heard from charlie nistel about that mission to learn project and it truly is a highlight of the collaboration we've had with rytn you know of course it's amazing to talk live with astronauts you know tough for that not to be a slam dunk event that everybody kind of raves about but from my perspective it was the learning that came after the event with students and teachers that made it such a success and that was a vision that rytn really shared as we worked together for several months making it all come together from the beginning the rytn staff bought fully into the vision that this was not really about the downlink but about leveraging the event for some great student learning and to see our sixth graders dive into trying to explain astrogenesis or cellular mutations from space radiation and having the support to make high quality videos to share that learning was truly an example of how about technology integration 20 per century learning and partnerships like this can really empower learning with kids um i'd also call it a huge success because their sixth grade teacher natashah gray gained enough confidence through the rytn support that she recreated the project again last year this time watching the unit with educator astronaut ricky arnold through skype in his office at johnson space sign so professional development like this that builds sustainability when you have that kind of supports a key part of the partnerships and something that we're really hoping continues in the future i often introduced myself as a recovering school administrator um prior to my role with my current role i was the principal of shelbert community school for seven years and that began in 2010 in that role i also partnered with rytn the community media center regularly as they broadcast our school board meetings as their graduations and other special events i have to i love getting the email from grandparents or distant family who are able to join us electronically from afar for their loved ones graduation or see their fifth greater play in their first band concert our school is probably one of more technologically blessed k8s in the state we have money and we have equipment yet we certainly didn't have the equipment or the expertise to make these sorts of quality webcasts happen so fortunately our community media center has always been willing to loan us equipment and often send their staff to stand right beside our students as our students would broadcast the events and many times our students got their start with those partnerships in 2014 when shelbert school board decided they wanted to try to undertake a ten million dollar renovation we also partnered with rytn to create a video that shared the story of the needs and plans for our community i'm convinced that was the video they helped produce that was instrumental in building the consensus we needed to pass that bond and create what i probably can say is probably the best middle school instructional building in the state right now across the state we've been developing our graduation proficiencies as part of act 77 and i think that every set i've seen includes some element of students will be clear and effective communicators all too often i think we fail to think broadly in terms of just what communication skills are essential for 21st century literacy and i would propose that if a student can't make a concise compelling audio podcast or video then in fact they're essentially illiterate in today's world nearly as much so as a student who can't write a complete sentence digital media is no longer a luxury it's truly the backbone of 21st century communication and although my new job title is digital learning leader i'm woefully experienced in regards to using digital media i didn't grow up making videos recording soundtracks but now i find myself wanting to be sure my students have the skills to do both so i want to use about 30 seconds sounds good fortunately another element of our community media centers they not only support special projects but they offer classes on the weekends and and i've been able to take part these past two weeks i've been able to introduce my middle schoolers to green screen stop motion video all because of classes i've been able to take we're working together to cut try to understand 360 video and virtual reality again projects i get to do with partners at r etn so thank you for giving me the time to share about the impact our community media center r etn has had in our school our students and my professional development having been an administrator i truly understand the complexity of funding challenges and appreciate your commitment to try to keep this great resource available to schools and educators around the state thank you thank you thank you very much and we are out of time but um are you going to be able to stick around a little bit after the um testimony today are you heading back to school um like we don't want to go back to school are you joking what are you talking about okay all right wonderful thank you next up i believe it's david connor from my pillar well charlie nestel are a hard act to follow yes indeed but it's actually what i wanted to talk about um i'm nape connor i'm the retired emeritus pastor at the old meeting house i'm up in front of the post office with peace signs every friday and i represent orca because i'm on the board of orca um i really want to say i first want to thank you all but i want to thank those that spoke for incredibly articulate explanations of why public access is important i've spent my entire life trying to make the media available to the people that are less had less voice uh while i was director of the model family center we uh there were there were the uh states television places where you could have live meetings talk to people in rattle borough talk to legislators talk to people they're running agencies and all of a sudden without any vote at our town meeting or any other vote among the parent child centers it stopped we shut down and that to me was was what the media can do is to unite us and one of the reasons i sort of talked john block until letting me get on the orca board is that i want to have the public access available to the entire citizenry free speech television when i was a chaplain at cornell there were students that were doing a pirate radio station the FCC was trying to find them you know locate them and shut them down why can't the FCC take all of the frogs that are on the telephones of my own house and go after them they want to go after somebody wants to talk about real truth through news and so what i've always wanted to do was have the media be alive especially for the next generation for those that are marching about the sixth extinction worried about the animals birds and plants and life that the planet has they need to be able to hear themselves and see themselves the way the charlie and nostalgia spoke about and in a place like orca we're thinking about trying to have even more chance for them to make their truth and their understanding their technology in their sense of the future alive for them and and actually see themselves doing something that becomes available to the entire community there's ever since television there was this weird thing where people always wanted to see themselves on television remember you'd have people on the street in new york city and there'd be many politicians still and they would be you know and what do the lies you're coming say the children are the people that we send to a future that we will not see and and to me public access is incredibly important for that very reason but then i'll just say one more thing did you see how little you had for this meeting tiny print monday october 21 montpelier underlined public hearing on peg access television 10 a.m 12 noon room 10 state house peg access study community this is small print will hold a public hearing and a value of peg access channels and services and rock community that doesn't draw them in doesn't bring people here i mean there was a whole list of other things that were going on on october 21st and i said wait a minute that's the problem we're talking about how do you make the community aware of what's really important and because look what i've got i had the entire orca scheduled for yesterday means that i would like to know about things that i like to have been at and i can't get to but i could watch it three in the morning after i watched brian williamson and that's enough i've used almost five you got a full minute left all right thank you so much i appreciate that a lane haney seeing you in another uh situation here that i usually see you i'm excited to hear your testimony come on up good morning and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today uh and for exploring sustainable funding options for Lamont's peg access organizations my name is lane haney i'm the chair of the town of sx select board and the town of sx includes the incorporated village of sx junction we are the second largest municipality in vermont with a combined population of over 21 000 people i have been the chair of the board of channel 17 town meeting television for four years and have represented both sx and sx junction on that board for seven years i'm also an employee of the agency of commerce and community development but i am not here in that capacity today understood we rely heavily on channel 17 as an essential part of comprehensive community outreach for multiple controversial topics that our residents care deeply about live streaming of public meetings conveniently connects people with the select board and the village trustees more importantly our residents are watching our meetings after the fact online multiple times we are the first community in vermont i believe learn land correcting if i'm wrong to live stream annual meeting so we have been trying to innovate and bring our residents more involved into government by using channel 17 in that way videos about our recent firearms discharge ordinance amendments were viewed and shared hundreds of times the lone reporter who covers our community for our local paper seems to write about almost all of our meetings i wonder how he does that because he watches all of the meetings and reports on them that way because he's just one guy residents refer to planning commission meeting videos to maintain accountability as they watch buildings go up in their neighborhoods and want to ensure that what was agreed to at the pc meeting is actually happening on their street and sx junction and sx are once again preparing to vote on merger channel 17 is a crucial part of educating residents on how merger might impact them we simply cannot do the business of governing without our peg access station the current precarious state of funding for peg station statewide concerns municipalities deeply and we urge the legislature to consider alternative funding models that will sustain and strengthen them channel 17's coverage area is comprised of sx as its junction harlington south burlington wilson the new ski and parts colchester over 200 000 people have access to our services each municipality pays annually for meeting coverage however the cost of recording editing and broadcasting these meetings far exceeds the funding municipalities can provide the balance currently made up by funding from local cable providers is in jeopardy and our municipalities will not be able to replace all of it in the past four years we have twice asked our member municipalities to double their annual appropriation to channel 17 i think you'll agree that requesting a doubling of appropriations on a regular basis is not a sustainable funding model we will soon propose a small annual increase that we hope our manual member municipalities will be able to absorb but the potential gap in funding we face could not be made up unless we asked each municipality to increase their appropriation over 400 percent our member municipalities are willing to cover part of the cost of providing public access to local government but we are unable to carry the whole burden of the declining revenue we must identify sustainable sources of revenue that will not only allow pet stations to continue providing your monitors access to government but that will also enable them to keep up with changing technology and the challenge of reaching the citizens who depend upon that access wherever they are whether it's online on their phones or in front of their TVs we are encouraged by the legislature's willingness to explore the possibilities of how to sustainably fund the essential service pike stations provider communities we support the exploration of revenue alternatives like allowing municipalities to establish public right-of-way use fees to cover the use of highway and street rights of way by providers of telecommunication services we look forward to uncovering more alternatives as the explorations into potential funding models continue we urge you to prioritize this discussion so that potential solutions can be developed and implemented before it becomes an emergency thank you again for working with us to ensure access to local government for responders by protecting and strengthening our pet stations thank you kathryn grater from east month leader good morning good morning i'm kathryn grater past president of the legal women voters in vermont here to speak for the league a legal women voters mission is empower voters defending democracy i want to tell you how the community how community television helps the league advance that mission the league has three primary chapters in vermont in chitlin county in central vermont and in the north east kingdom with other members scattered around the state in chitlin county the league of champ legal women voters of sampling valley has worked with cc tv to present candidates forms including last spring's city council election they have had public presentations recorded including one with secretary of state jim condos on election security and former representative tim little tom little i'm redistricting they've had programs on issues ranging from health care to food deserts including a call and show on clean water for the past six years the central vermont league my home league has had a variety of programs recorded by orca beginning with a series of in studio interviews with government officials state legislators and professional experts on a wide variety of topics more recently the league has hosted an annual spring lecture related in some way to civic engagement which have been recorded on-site by orca for the past three years the central vermont league has partnered with the cali cover library to prevent a series of four or five programs organized under a common theme five programs on the first amendment four on political issues under the rubric constitutional crisis and this year we are presenting five programs on criminal justice in vermont covering incarcerated women prison health care implicit bias racial bias in enforcement prosecution and sentencing and re-entering the community following incarceration all of these have been or will be recorded and aired by orca as in past election years we anticipate holding candidate forms for the health of orca next year also cctv and and kington tv the league in the northeast kingdom often partners with kingdom access tv and st. john fairy either by requesting that they record and rebroadcast our public programs like candidate forms or speakers or that they help produce informational videos which they will then broadcast as part of their programming and which we can also share in the link via email facebook and front porch forum just last week uh st john's very members interviewed the secret superintendent of schools about a proposal to bond to improvements to fund improvements to the st j school building an issue which st john's very voters will have to vote on earlier november so that the vote so that those voters can know about the facts before they head to the polls earlier this year the northeast kingdom league interviewed candidates for select board an advance of town meeting day because they had often heard from voters and that is very difficult to know who to vote for in local elections because of a derse of information last year they interviewed st j's town clerk on k atv about the nuts and bolts of registering and voting we hope to create they hope to create a nonpartisan program on k atv about how to judge a candidate to help voters navigate 2020's election cycles found any one minute left okay excuse me one minute yeah that's quite a litany from just one organization that makes use of the public access television stations the league also recognizes and appreciates the value of the live and reported governmental proceeding provided by our public access stations while the advent of the internet has complicated local peg stations legal and financial circumstances it has taken their services beyond the local the remand access network makes programming available statewide and the league routinely sends the links to our programs to our membership asking them to ask their local stages to air them the league along voters of remand is well aware of the public vote provided by our community access stations and what advocate for public funding to sustain this important service thank you so much and thank you also for your service with the league of women voters I don't know did you see the article in the New York Times the other day there was a woman in the league of um women voters who discovered that after all of her work getting people registered to vote that her own name had been removed from the rolls and in Ohio exactly and she and a whole cadre of volunteers are are very carefully going through systematically putting people back on the road. Ohio was one of the states yes so we are so lucky yes thank you thank you Jerome Lepani from Adamus yes yes i'm looking around one place who's going to film you now what's going to happen that's right this is a turnaround moment i'm stepping from behind the camera where i usually have the role of being a witness to these meetings which i find to be actually quite a wonderful occupation because the role of witness is usually absented from our society there are many reasons why i enjoyed being a cameraman at orca and it has to do perhaps with the history of my own activism in the 1960s when we were attempting to stop the Vietnam War and when the environmental movement which has now become a global movement was just at its beginning we understood that our words were not being heard by our society that in fact we were being oppressed we were being we were being edited out of of the of the political and spiritual discourse that was necessary in our society i as a as a young artist activist i i realized we realized i should say those of us who are a handful of people who were doing these things that we needed to create our own media in order to be able to tell our own stories and so public access tv has was born out of that very need which we still have of course 50 years later the the situation has become even more critical in terms of environmental issues for example the my activism has become the act of actually recording events that would never be seen by the public this gives me a tremendous sense of satisfaction not only theater events that would never be seen we at orca were able to were able to broadcast entire theater pieces of bread and puppet for example this summer i was given the privilege of being able to record all of the developmental pieces made by bread and puppet which is a a tremendous voice for freedom and activism in our in our society just this weekend i actually filmed the encampment of extinction rebellion that was right outside the state house they had many messages these young people were so brave to be camping out there in this cold and rainy weather for two days i really admired them so much so that it took me to make a 12-minute piece which i put out yesterday actually required eight hours of work that that shows that how it shows that the recording of these events is not really free it it really does take hard work and so i'm just here to to say i hope that we will in these very critical times that we are now faced with that we need the voice of public access more than ever more than we've ever needed the there is a sense in the witnessing of events in which vulnerability emotional vulnerability is permitted to occur this is a very healthy impulse in society we we need not to be invulnerable with incredible military expenditures to to to protect our invulnerability we need to become vulnerable to other cultures to other people to to ancient cultures to learning from them to learning from each other that is how we're going to preserve life on this planet so i just want to tell you something i'm trying to give you a message about the innate vitality of what we are doing now and how we need it to help our very life process thank you thank you thank you Kathy O'Reilly from Tonic Colchester good morning good morning thank you for having me giving me the opportunity to speak my name is Kathy O'Reilly i'm the director of economic development for the town of Colchester my job is to advocate and to assist businesses who are in our community but also those who are looking to relocate into our community we're fortunate enough to have Lake Champlain Access TV our community media center located in Colchester and knowing that this FCC funding in action could hurt them that is why i'm here they provide jobs and our value added in our community they employ our residents but they also employ residents of our sounding our surrounding communities excuse me but i'm also here to talk about how we at the municipality level use them as a resource they are not just a business to us they are a resource as well they provide the public with government access through taped and live productions of government activities issues events and meetings they provide public access in an open forum and non-commercial informational programming for citizens of all groups organizations clubs and enterprises we have reached we rewards wow i'm having trouble with that by working with them they've developed videos for us that help highlight Colchester our medities and our assets they've done these in multiple languages when we have needed it all all they have put it all together for us found the people to translate and done everything they've afforded us much needed drone pictures and videos that we of course would not on a municipal budget been able to go out and get on our own they are helping us with the redesign on our website so that we can embed things that the the web design firm would have charged us far too much for and we couldn't afford that the community centers also allowed for our seniors and homebound people to be a part of our community they get to watch the government meetings they get to watch the high school graduations that we've talked about they get to look at the real local rudery meetings isolation is hard for everybody especially our elderly we have long winters here it keeps everybody engaged as we know we have one of the oldest demographics and i think these community media centers are a public good and serve a growing need as we have this aging population Vermont relies heavily on community media centers more so than most states and it's easy to see how they are a vital part of our community fabric both now and into the future as public engagement is crucial and a priority for all municipalities i appreciate the work the committee is doing on trying to identify new funding sources we need to ensure a stable and sustainable funding source for these community media centers and that's why the town pollchester select board signed a resolution in December of 2018 opposing any FCC action that would greatly impact this funding thank you for the opportunity thank you so much we have about two minutes sorry i want to see if anyone has any questions for you or clarification his cultures can make a financial contribution yes kevin could answer more directly on on that note i i not in that i use them because i also handle marketing so i use my marketing budget and make a donation when they do something for us thank you so much thank you next up donna giro from woodstock good morning good morning everyone and thank you for doing the hard work that you're doing i know it is hard work i am here representing five towns i am the executive director of community access television c atv we it's a population about 48,000 people and 11,000 cabled homes between Comcast and VTEL and we're also since many of the community is not cabled we're also internet we live stream our stations channels and we also have a video on the system so we try to support the community and what i wanted to talk to you today about was in 2018 there was a sudden funding loss due to GAAP which is the national accounting standard for publicly held companies and suddenly we were down 17,000 dollars out of our budget and it had a ricochet effect but before i explain that effect i thought it would be important for you to understand what we're really good at so besides being a conduit for the community to create connections we're also incredibly good at educating our communities we teach 21st century media skills which are all job able skills we not only support the five towns that were responsible for them there's surrounding communities that send their high schoolers and their middle schoolers to us that for chelsea uh sharon of tonbridge these are not supported by public access stations so we have a broader reach we do one-on-one adult education anyone walks in our door we will educate them we do a we're a feeder we have middle school camps that are very successful because i get scholarships for everyone through grants um so no kid is left behind then we also have them as high school interns which of course we have to pay because no high schooler will actually intern for us unless uh there's something lucrative in it um they we have to turn them into volunteers they become government videographers they become volunteer videographers they become editors all of this takes time and training an example is one of our students went through our whole program became went to was so inspired she went to the hartford what is it technical high school for the in the design program she went off to college all while working with us went off to college in vermont came back every summer worked in our camps as a counselor worked part-time did everything every job we had she's um did through high school and college i had a job waiting for her when she finished college she became a full-timer and now this week she's sending me a high school intern from the technical high school because now she teaches the design program at that technical high school it is a it is a classic example of keeping it in vermont of education pre-education and um so to have a funding loss of course it's going to affect what we are capable of doing on an educational level so the ricochet is two years ago um we suddenly lost 17 000 dollars out of our budget because of this change in the counting standard so now we're up to 34 000 and this year when our servers melted down um we had anticipated the servers melting because when you're in a non-profit you use a piece of equipment till it dies so now we're 34 000 the server replacement was a 60 000 dollar expense installed so where do i get the money from 34 would have come out of the that funding because we try to we try to save for capital expenses it comes it eventually ricochets down to our education program we know the secret sauce to educate get those media skills get those job skills going we just need the funding to buy the ingredients to be able to do that so i really appreciate that you guys are here and that you're doing what you're doing because i anticipate we're going to have even harder times ahead with the FCC changes so thank you yeah when you talk about the 17 000 you said 34 000 now well yeah so in 2018 it was 17 000 and when i talked to our cable provider they said to anticipate the same loss from this point forward so what cable providers i have two cable providers detail but i don't believe that's publicly held i haven't seen any change in revenue so and the majority of our business is through Comcast okay and you said it's directly as a result of the accounting changes right right exactly so that's so that they already took effect those counting changes for the last two years so to just see how a small amount of money can have a great impact you know there's the public access had very simple budgets if you think about it as a company we've always been worked as a utility so to spend our time trying to transition from a utility business model to a non-profit business model is very time consuming so to have the services suffer so you're trying to make sure that none of your services suffer so the softest services education and unfortunately it has the greatest impact on our global economy donna thank you thank you Judy Paxman i believe from swanson good morning good morning thank you i'm going to be here so my name is Judy Paxman and i am the executive director of the swanson arts council and i'd really like to thank you for taking the time to consider new funding sources for public access television you've heard so much information and statistics about why it's so important so i'm not gonna do that i'm actually going to tell you a story and that's a story about a man named Scott Scott returned to the swanson area after release from prison following a battle with alcohol and addiction he was in a dead-end job that he detested and he was trying to rebuild his life when he started attending local arts events his passion was music and he began dabbling with writing and art to fill some of the voids that alcohol and drugs had left behind Scott joined the writers group held at the library and i think that's where he first heard about northwest access tv you really can't be in any public event in swanson for very long without hearing about northwest access tv it could be because it's so embedded in our community we all end up on videos sooner or later and so is Scott he started off helping to create a promo video on northwest access for the swanson arts spectacular which is an outdoor artisan showcase live live music then Scott took part in a small community video project for Northwest Nightmares and that's an event that is hosted by northwest access tv where he had his acting debut and he had the opportunity to see himself on the big screen at the well in theater in St. Almond's Scott was again filmed performing original music at the emotion speaks art show held at our local library local reporter interviewed Scott on northwest access program to talk about his music his art and his path of recovery and he participated in the great poetry where he filled his library and this goes on and on and on during all these interactions at northwest access Scott's confidence grew and it was reflected in his attitude in his music his writing and his actions and he started getting even more involved he started to help promote local artists in swanton and St. Almond's and he took the lead in arranging for all the performers for the next year of swanton art spectacular and he was instrumental in establishing free concerts newly formed swanson soundstage Scott started to be seen not as a recovering alcoholic but as a local celebrity and a passionate supporter of the arts in our community in northwest access not only played a vital role in his transformation he documented his journey along the way in a positive and supportive environment Scott now hosts a public a monthly public access show dedicated to the arts in swanton and has been nominated to the board of directors for the swanton arts council he is pursuing his music as his primary source of income and he's in the process of recording his first album and that's just Scott's story just one person impacted by public access television who makes up one of the statistics you heard today I could really list a dozen more I could like like Emmett who's when he was 19 he won a writer's award and he was interviewed by a local reporter at Northwest Access TV soon with their help he was creating his own videos doing his own directing filming and editing and that reporter who interviewed him and Emmett he are Emmett and Scott he's also in Northwest Access regular now and he's taking part in community videos creating his own developing his passion for acting and editing and directing I could talk about Heather who started as a part-time videographer and she has now made it her personal mission to create independent spotlights on local swanton businesses and wants to get them all she's doing that on her own time she's also accepted an appointment to the Planning and Zoning Board so Jody about William and Freight I could talk about Nicole who's gone from camera phobic to now being part of a video and I'm a local community video and I'll end with Kim Lee who participated in her first swanton community video at age four now at six she started three community videos and she has a solid connection now to the community that will last for entire life each statistic that you hear today is made up of individuals who are gaining confidence experience and another connection to their community because of public access television this service is so vitally important to our local government our community and our non-profit organizations but the impact it has on each individual is priceless thank you so much for your time thank you Jamie Riley from Sunderland Tami Tami oh I apologize don't worry thank you for coming thank you I'm Tami Riley I'm the executive director at Greater Northshire Access Television also known as Genet TV and we serve 11 towns in the Manchester region southwest southwestern Vermont our service area population is about 15 000 people and our cable channels reach 6 000 plus homes many years ago we recognized that we need to offer programs and services that are relevant to people's 20% free lives so we built up our government coverage we launched a new youth education and training programs and we acknowledge that our information needs of our local communities were not being met by commercial television we do have access to commercial television in Albin in New York in Burlington Vermont but the coverage of issues that affect southwestern Vermont are negligible and frankly the coverage exists when something terrible happens so that's what we've seen in our community so to address the news and information desert we launched the news project in 2016 and I want to talk about that a little bit and then talk about how our organization is navigating the current climate the news project is a mechanism to provide local information to the people in our 11 distinct communities since 2016 Genet TV has produced 716 pieces of local news content and while the cable provider does not provide us with viewer data we are able to capture online statistics we saw a 56 percent increase in video views online between 2016 and 2017 between 2017 and 2018 we saw a 176 percent increase in online consumption of our material the increase in the online community engagement reflects both the relevance of the information offered by the news project and our ability to leverage those online distribution platforms so like all of our colleagues around the state that have talked about this we play a vital role in providing cultural coverage historical coverage and and local issues that really impact the daily lives of our citizens we partner with organizations in our communities the historical societies libraries and schools several years ago we also recognize that the cable industry is evolving the regulatory structuring change and we've been thinking strategically about development and fundraising and we embarked on changing the culture of our organization to support development and fundraising efforts we built a modest list of donors and underwriters in each town meeting day we asked the town's voters for a small appropriation of $2,000 to help offset the cost of our government coverage in light of the recent events the slight loss of subscribers the FCC ruling and the gap accounting changes we're exploring all options to sustain our future we're making many operational changes to address the funding shortfalls and we continue to develop our fundraising plans for the future unfortunately after offering services free of charge for nearly 25 years we're compelled to charge fees to our constituents for many of our services we're reviewing our policies we're developing free-for-service programs for our schools and our non-profit organizations and we've instituted modest fees for our training programs we've held off on purchasing new technology and our staff will not receive the cost of living increases despite all of these strategies 92 of our funding is still derived from the cable subscribers these austerity measures and modest revenue generating strategies won't be enough to sustain the organization our organizational capacity is challenged as we try to build out fundraising and development structure experience fundraisers know you need focus and you need staff to be successful so the endeavors to build out our development capacity may come at the cost of delivering the programs for our community and this needs to be recognized so Tammy about one? Sure thank you um in closing as the regulatory structures change and market transformations force our sector to define our value and our relevance it also provides us an opportunity to be resilient and innovative and I'm hopeful that the legislature will find a solution to support community media and the needs of Ramoners by requiring communications providers to contribute to the public good for the use of the rights away community media is a public asset worth protecting and it's vital to the people of Vermont thank you for your work I appreciate the time thank you Steve Whitaker from Montpelier good morning you labor the value of public access I'd like to speak to some of the proposed solutions I'll call your attention to a document that I just received the state members of the state and federal board on universal service funds got tired of being stalled by the federal members at the FCC so they finally just put out their proposed decision the state members clearly articulate the rationale and a defensible strategy for charging all users of the right-of-way actually they mentioned all communications users but Charles Larkin who couldn't be here today and I have been proposing that all users are the right way be they including electric and in some cases gas very gas pipeline where it's in the public right away could all all users of the public right away could contribute to a fund to support the public good I think it's important that this committee consider recommending legislation that defines the public good it's too vague of a concept and it's used erratically and it's important for the public utilities commission to have its feet held to the fire to defend what a public good is according to a statutory standard reviving Vermont interactive television what I call next generation DIT was recommended by the PUC years ago as a public engagement public hearing medium and there are quite a few agencies in state government that are supposed to be engaging with the public in budget draft budget development through the finance office etc they don't have that tool the league of cities and towns could do more effective training with Vermont interactive television that's a logical fit with the public access stations to support the creation of VIT and co-located and fiber connected with these public access stations they were VIT was generating hundreds of thousands in revenue using the old outdated and expensive technology new technology is much less expensive to operate equipment wise it's more expensive connectivity wise so establishing gigabit or 10 gigabit circuits to all the AMO's should be a top priority both for to support the statewide AMO creation and to support file sharing and archiving among the AMO's you've got two minutes sir I believe the governance the opportunity here when we start talking about putting state funding from the universal service fund type model into public access media it's going to necessitate a uniform governance and standards I'd encourage you to think about the role that the access media organizations could play in emergency planning and management we need to have community information centers stay live to inform the public and for people to know where they could go and there's a generator they could charge their cell phone they could get the latest news on what needs to happen it's possible that with some resiliency rules written and enforced by the PUC Comcast could be required to or the cable companies could be required to just read reconfigure the network so that they could be kept alive by generators where they're fiber so where they are connected by fiber the pole mounted amplifiers are a recurring issue they interrupt voice voice service and leave dead zones when the power outage is our extended about 45 seconds just i'll stop and let you ask any questions I didn't want you to feel cut off I just wanted you to be okay I feel cut off regularly so I'm going to ask a quick question you were talking about non-interactive television are you suggesting that the public the peg tv peg access tv stations provide non-interactive television like services yes funded by the state as a income producing center recognizing and regulated I mean they need to be available their needs if the legislature needs it for a statewide hearing that has to preempt something else okay thank you so much appreciated Angelica Contas from Richmond hi so I'm Angelica Contas and I'm the director of not made for the community television and I'm going to do core style to get through this time which has served Jericho Underhill and Richmond since 1997 so I'd like to underline the threat to Vermont's collective local memory in peg funding or to decline a lot of the work we do today is not just about today but about preserving video archives for tomorrow we build our towns for all sorts of stories each day whether our staff fallen tiers or staff film a public meeting high school graduation town meeting day or smaller moments such as interviews with artists at open studio or residents rebuilding after a flood so in a time when local press is getting thinner non-commercial community media centers like ourselves are embedded in our communities and devoted to shepherding a wealth of hyper local stories into the future so I'd like to give you an example of a program that captures local stories that would be imperiled by a funding crop our memory map wrote history video series so in 2012 MMC tv received a grant from the Vermont community foundation to create a paid internship for young filmmakers age 12 to 21 would make videos about local road histories so since then and long after the grant ran out youth from our three towns have made eight videos so eight for each short documentary they figure out research its history interview people film the road as it is today and find photos just did one small example Jericho farmer Dean Davis resolved a local mystery revealing how racer wrote got a snake he recalled his mother and on talking about Sunday horse races and that was long before his time or hours so at MMC tv we worry that gems like this that add to our community's knowledge of ourselves would be lost with a major cable revenue drop so last year and this is echoing some of my colleagues statements but just to give you a sense that this is happening in many towns we turned to our municipalities for the first time for discretionary funds and they were able to cover more than half of our $13,000 shortfall in our estimated 2018 budget and today our small staff is spending less time on videos and more time on fundraising from more paid summer tv camps from young people which we actually learned the model from CATV to encouraging a local brewery to make a special edition peg beer we are hoping to as a survival strategy to maybe move into one of our municipal buildings soon so these efforts have resulted in about 10 percent of our current $155,000 budget being made up of non-cable revenue this year over the next two to five years maybe we could find 30 or even 50 percent of our total budget locally it's hard however to envision finding more money around town or three towns while still maintaining our own focus and mission what we're there to do so concern about future funding drops is already making us kind of think twice and being less embracing of people when they come to us are like can you film this can you film that or putting resources in what we call our extra projects things that are special and made in HD and really pretty so my hope is that this community will keep the important work that peg centers are doing every day in building and preserving and making accessible Vermont's collective memory as it takes the time as you do the work to help us do our work for yours to come thank you you were so efficient we have a minute and 30 seconds left if there are questions I have a question in terms of you're saying now they've spent more time on fundraising you have less time essentially for doing the work of programming and so can you just give us an example of what that that looks like last year I promised somebody who had made a garden tour video series that it would be done at the end of the summer and because of summer camps and this and that we saw some of the first garden tour videos come on to the screen like when there's snow on the ground which is only in some ways but not necessarily appropriate yes so this is to turn around time that's slower because our staff is basically myself full time into other people part time and higher field producers and volunteers is that because you you're having less hours that you're getting paid for or is it because you have to do more fundraising efforts um our hours have stayed the same and we've actually continued with our three percent annual increase for our staff um but um yeah there's just the time that you devote to making that poster or encouraging the brewer to do this or that with the you know getting local beer out that you're not spending you know researching new cameras or finding a way to fix that live stream thank you so we have one more witness who has signed up though I'm looking at the time and we do have time if there are other folks in the room who came and weren't sure if they wanted to testify and now are interested if that is you please come see the committee assistant Peggy and we can get your name and where you're from and hear from you before we run out of time so next up is Hannah Denison from Washington thank you for coming yeah Washington Vermont Washington Vermont not Washington County uh hi I'm in Washington DC no I understand um I am a dance artist of 40 years in this state and uh came upon um my public assets channel at the time I was living Burlington it was RITM and I was as most artists trying to make it on a little thin thread and I was working with a videographer who had recently graduated from high school and he was really good behind the camera did really great work but he could not wake up in the morning he put his phone right by his head he put you know this aside and I was waiting for him at RITM to have him help me edit so consequently I learned but my relationship started with the community access channel there and it was extremely fruitful and I don't know what I would do without them my work is regularly on their cycle and I have borrowed equipment and we have spent a great deal of time in the editing studio going through all the footage in order then to send it down to the person in Brooklyn who charges me you know a fair amount of money but we're chipping away at what it will cost by the work that we do in the access station I'm the executive director of Cradle to Grave Arts which is a long-standing nonprofit here in this state and there are a lot of people who come to see my work I mostly do work out in unorthodox spaces and currently right now I'm working in the flooded quarry in Websterville and creating a piece there that will be public in next summer and this summer the crew at the media factory brought their new VR camera to the quarry to get footage and used it for their own you know so liquid what we have here's a piece of equipment let's you know this is one way to look at it and use it and they have been my media partner for I don't know how long really long time and I I don't know what I would do without them because quite frankly the commercial television and public television they aren't they're not interested in this so they're vital to my part of the you know the conversation as an artist so I thank you for your work you're doing to move this long and make sure that we continue to get funding for this. Any questions? Hannah you talked about your necessity in needing to learn how to edit and I'm wondering if you could just tell us a little bit more about that. Well yeah I don't know that I can tell you very much more except that I was doing a year-long project on the waterfront in Burlington and so every month we were out there and every month I had footage to go through and then put up on the channel and so I just I had to learn and I have not necessarily kept that up because it's not what I want to spend my time doing just like fundraising is not what I want to spend my time doing but I have to so I but I have worked with the folks and public access and they helped me really sort of stood right next to me and helped me to learn how to do all of that electronic stuff so thank you. Thank you. So is there anyone in the audience today who is moved to testify because we do have some more time okay I wanted to thank oh did you see somebody was somebody oh oh I'm sorry I come on up I didn't see you back there let us know who you are and where you're from. My name is Dick Fodor from Middlebury. I retired two years ago as executive director of Middlebury Community Telling. Can you spell your last name? D-H-O-D-A-L and listening to all of this testimony brings back a flood of memories and I just wanted to bring up one that I remember from a conversation that we had in Bennington maybe in the sometime in the early 90s I think you may have been there but at the time we were we were just moving out of three-quarter inch tape and started to use VHS and the internet was just something that was just vaguely out there but we there were we had an idea that all of this was going to be evolved and I remember asking a question what would be the purpose of peg access if in the future everybody had a camcorder or some sort of a camera and that there was a way for everybody to to get their information online and and I think it was John Donovan from Cambridge Community Television is that that sound right and he said it's important for us to be aggregators in the community and that is that stuck with me you know from that time forward and so throughout the whole time that I was director at MCTV I felt that that aggregating local content was was really what we were there to do it's an excellent point good questions well you thought a lot about voice data and video run on the same lines same rights of way different regulations we've talked a lot about the importance of rationalizing that policy do you want to say anything about that today well are you leading the witness knowing that I'm joking I'm joking I am it's gonna say she missed her calling it's an excellent question and I would love to hear your thoughts on well ever since the beginning you know I've been acutely aware of bandwidth and what that all means and there are a number of I could get way out the weeds on it I think Steve Whitaker you know probably summed it up and said that all the peg access channels ought to have you know at least committed ethernet and that would open up so much more as as it is like at MCTV we're still stuck with old modulators and analog and analog transmission that goes way back to the 70s and I think it would be really you know I felt the whole time that it'll just be another couple of years before we have to stay to the arc but that never happened one more point so Steve if you'll come up I will since we do have time I'll give you another minute to make your thanks I ran out of time yeah it's important to frame this work of this committee the work of the access media organizations in the overall flux of technology governance you're all well aware of our difficulties in achieving a coherent comprehensive telecommunications plan back in the 90s it was the public access stations involved or public access leaders involved in the docket over the Vermont telecommunications agreement contract where we discovered that the first telecom plan had not been written we're in a similar moment now and it's the public access stations that are on the ground know who needs the what type of technology who can provide the meaningful input into creating a real telecom plan that I think that we should not with the urgency not having had a duly adopted plan since 04 or 15 years behind with a comprehensive telecom plan and it's important that we get it done right this time and that will necessarily provide another opportunity for the state to provide some financial support to coordinate these workshops teach people how to provide meaningful input into the telecom plan thank you so I don't want to beat a dead horse however as an extrovert I'm always aware that there are introverts in the room that just need a little bit more time to decide they want to testify my wife always reminds me of this she says just because you feel comfortable talking off the cuff not everyone does so I just want to make sure if there's someone who came today that feels like they do want to speak that they know they have the opportunity to you do not need to take all five minutes but if there's something that you need us to know please feel free certainly you don't feel like talking though you can always submit your comments to the committee which can receive them electronically and I would like to point out that you have received quite a number of electronically so logistically shortly we'll wrap up and then as a committee we're going to reconvene at one and our meetings are all open to the public if you want to sit in and listen to our conversation I do want to thank everyone for coming and I want to take the opportunity to thank all the folks who have volunteered their time on this work group it is we do it because we love the work that we do we're not getting compensated for this work except that we heard today all the reasons why tag access is so vital and I just want to go through some of the things that folks mentioned today it is about government it's about art it's about educating our local community members it's about bringing together community someone talked about allowing people not just to think their own ideas think their own thoughts but have those conveyed out to the public it's about news local and statewide it's about giving people technical expertise it's about training students in short it is about us it's about who we are as Vermonters and that is why we give our time to this committee so again thank you so much for coming today committee feel free to take a lunch break and then we can be at one I see someone else in the audience that would like to say something I have a brief question which is for any of us who are present who have further thoughts on the basis of what we've heard in this hearing is there a mechanism for us to provide further written comment beyond what we gave absolutely so Mike Ferrant who is our committee assistant Peggy is substituting today but his email address is on the webpage for this committee and you should absolutely feel free to submit any testimony electronically that you want to submit to add more detail perhaps to your testimony or to somebody else's so and then did you just want to say what the outcome of this committee is and why this testimony is valuable to us right so the charge for the committee is to put forward a bill or bills in the upcoming legislative session that will address this issue of long-term funding and sustainability for these channels now it could be that what will come out of that will be a recommendation for further research that we don't have enough to to charge the legislature with coming up with a plan in the upcoming session that is what we're going to be talking about for the next two meetings as a group to figure out what do we have it was what do we have the runway to get done before the end of our time and what can we charge our colleagues with and as my vice chair reminded me of this morning anything that we put forward of course goes through the committee process in both the house and the senate and so which is a wonderful thing because all these other people get to weigh in on the plan and they get to hear from their constituents as well so whatever that we're putting forward is really just a concept or idea that will be vetted by many people going forward so thank you okay thank you so much have a nice day everybody