Janet Evans took the time to respond to the release from ECTV, clarifying what happened at Council last night.
“It is absolutely false that City Council is pulling the plug” Evans said. ”I spearheaded the fight to get cameras back in after the Mayor had them removed years ago.”
Evans explained that, yes, the agreement was amended, but that there would most certainly be a PEG channel (basically a public access channel). Comcast itself has no dealings with ECTV and it’s up to the Mayor and Council to administer funds to it.
The point of contention for Evans is that there is no contract between ECTV and Scranton. This is amazing, because if there’s nothing in writing, how do we know what services ECTV is even supposed to provide? They originally said they would put Council meetings up on the Internet, and for people like me with no Comcast, the Internet is the only way for me to watch my government meetings. Since there is no written agreement, ECTV isn’t obligated to do this (which is why they haven’t).
According to Evans, “ECTV has no accountability. They answer to nobody. They simply do their own programming without input from the city. The city funds their operations, but they have never provided any accounting to us in the two years they’ve existed until July of this year.” The city requested invoiced, Evans said, and the invoice they finally received was for unpaid salaries, but didn’t provide a breakdown of employees or job descriptions. One charge was for 300 hours of carpentry work, but no description of the work was included.
Evans pointed out that ECTV received a $90,000 loan from OECD, but never made a single payment on it and had the loan forgiven in 12 months. This is ridiculous.
Evans continued, “This amendment opens the door to have a new PEG provider through a request for proposals, but we need a contract. We will provide guidelines as to what we expect.” Putting this out to bid will give the city the best bang for its buck. In fact, ECTV purchased its equipment with city money and if, after bidding is done, they do not get selected as a provider, they must return the equipment.
To conclude, Evans said there would be public access no matter what and that was never and will never be in question.
